


fo·lie à deux

by Allie_J



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mental Institution, Bucky Barnes as Patient/Prisoner, Eating Disorder, Eventual Sexual Content, M/M, Mental Instability, Steve Rogers as an Orderly, Steve Rogers with No Memory, Yeah - It's Dark, brief descriptions of torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-04-25 07:04:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4951144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allie_J/pseuds/Allie_J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“James, can you tell me where we are?”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>He smiled a little at that.  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“We are in a facility designed by HYDRA to break me,” he answered.</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And he could bear it, if they didn't have Steve, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I See

Bucky stared at the floor as the line shuffled forward. That had become his routine – trying to find a pattern in the pink and peach-colored flecks of the linoleum, even though he knew they were random.

“James?”

The voice was different, and he found himself looking up in wonder before the recognition could process itself in his mind. The orderly was tall and broad-shouldered, standing out even with the same crisp, white scrubs.

He lifted his eyes from the clipboard. Blue, and kind.

“James?” he repeated.

Bucky swallowed hard, his hands shaking at his sides. Relief and joy flooded him, beating out the slower sense of dread. He wouldn’t be alone anymore. But it also meant that his friend, his only friend, was here.

“Steve?” he whispered. He couldn’t keep the lift of hope out of his voice, even though he knew he should be horrified.

Steve blinked, and a wary smile crept across his face.

“Yep,” he said, tapping the badge clipped to his pocket. The name ‘STEVE ROGERS’ was printed there, beneath a headshot of his smiling face. “That’s my name. And now I need yours.”

Bucky waited. He thought Steve might lower his gaze, look into his eyes knowingly to give an unspoken confirmation that he was lying. That he knew. Instead, he stared back at him dumbly, doublechecking the list on the clipboard.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s my first day. Can you just give me your name? I have to make sure you get the right meds.”

Bucky’s stomach bottomed out. He felt an echo of cold hollowness, the old feeling that once held him captive as the Winter Soldier. The inability to follow his thoughts, to feel. Similar to shock.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” he stated, his voice monotone. Steve nodded.

“Nice to meet you, James,” he said, and gave him an easy smile. He held out the little paper cup of pills invitingly, like they were candy.

Bucky knew the routine. He tossed back the pills, swallowed, and opened his mouth, showing his bare tongue. At first, he’d always tongued the pills, flushed them later in the toilet. Then, he’d taken them, wondering if they might make him feel empty, or high, or make him forget.

Then, when they did nothing, and it was clear that no one was coming, and nothing was changing, he started to hoard them in a hole in his mattress. He was getting close to what he judged might be enough for a quick overdose when they disappeared.

Steve seemed relieved that he knew what to do. He nodded, his smile deepening a little good-naturedly, and checked his name off the list.

“Great,” he said. His blue eyes never wavered.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Bucky liked to look out the window. The setting was suburban, non-descript, and no matter how hard he looked, the rooftops and trees were unfamiliar to him. It was a place he’d never been before, providing no clues.

He liked to see the planes go past in the distance. It was confirmation that life went on, that there was still a world out there, intact. He just couldn’t get to it.

Now he watched Steve. He didn’t try to hide it, didn’t see a point in that. After all, crazy people aren’t subtle. They stare all the time.

It was clear that Steve noticed. At first, he gave him quick, wondering glances over his shoulder. Then he ignored him, intensifying his casual conversations with the other orderlies. 

It was only one afternoon, when Bucky had gone back to the window, that he came over. He must’ve looked sad, staring out at nothing, and Steve had probably noticed by that point that he didn’t speak with the other patients. It was like him.

“Hey,” he said softly, approaching him like you would a teacher at a desk – tentatively, like he wasn’t quite allowed to interrupt. “Ahh. James.”

Bucky turned his head. His heart sped up, but he tried to fight it. He didn’t want to feel it, that crushing sensation when Steve looked at him and saw nothing.

“It’s Bucky,” he said flatly, and he couldn’t help but let a bit of defensiveness creep into his voice. After all, it was more than a name.

“Oh,” Steve said, frowning, and Bucky could see it immediately. His full middle name wasn’t routinely used, so it probably sounded like something bizarre that he’d only just made up. Something silly and strange.

He waited for Steve to recover himself.

“Okay,” he continued. “Bucky, then.”

He pulled himself out a plastic chair from a nearby table, angling it toward the window next to him.

“Watching clouds?” he asked. “Kind of soothing, isn’t it?”

Bucky fought the urge to scoff. He heard this language all the time – from the doctors, the orderlies, the arts and crafts instructors. Always pointing out everything that was ‘calming’ and ‘relaxing’.

“Better than television,” he muttered. He felt guilty, even just for that moment of resentment. It was still Steve. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know him.

“Yeah?” the other man asked uneasily. “Not even the sitcoms? It can be good, y’know, to just let yourself laugh. Even if it’s not that funny.”

The television ran on a six week loop. No one had seemed to notice, but there came a time when it all restarted, even the commercials. They were careful not to mention dates. There was no channel with a show that highlighted current events.

“It’s all garbage,” he said, slipping his wrist through the bars so he could press a fingertip to the glass. “Staged, faked. Out there. The sky. The clouds. That’s the only thing that’s real.”

Steve frowned, looked down at his hands. Bucky cursed himself – here was Steve, or some part of Steve, trying to reach out to him, and he was alienating him. Throwing away a chance to connect with him that would be a long time in coming again.

He realized how long it had been since he’d spoken to someone without it having been a calculated lie.

“You seemed like you wanted someone to talk to,” Steve ventured. He clasped his hands between his knees, awkwardly wringing them. 

Meaning, I noticed you’ve been staring at me from your corner, Bucky thought, but the sight of Steve still trying to perform an act of goodwill, even toward someone he thought was a pathetic stranger, couldn’t help but warm him.

“Maybe you could talk more with some of the other patients,” he went on. He must’ve seen the dark look on Bucky’s face, because he faltered, coughing. “Or, you know. Take up some kind of hobby?”

He dwelled on that for a moment, thinking of the earnest smiles on his instructors’ faces. Once they worked up the courage to engage with him more than the bare minimum necessary to meet their job requirements, they showered him with empty compliments. As if they really believed that molding a lop-sided clay pot could bring him that one step closer to sanity.

“Yeah?” he questioned bitterly. “Got something in mind for me? Making necklaces out of yarn and dry macaroni?”

He didn’t want to push Steve away, he didn’t. It just seemed to be the only way to stop himself from fisting his hands in his hair, pulling them forehead to forehead and begging, desperately, for him to remember.

Steve was predictably quiet for a moment. Bucky wondered how long he was going to put up with this conversation, taking every hit like a sad puppy and still bouncing back.

But god, if that wasn’t affirmation that it was Steve, somewhere, inside. Not just an empty shell with his face and his name.

“I like to draw,” the other man said quietly. “Not that I’m, you know, any good, but it’s a good way to unwind. Pass the time.”

Bucky’s eyes shot up at that, widened. He stared hard at him, mouth falling open slightly. For his part, Steve blushed, averting his eyes and absently rubbing the back of his head, as if, with this admission, Bucky could see and judge every image he’d ever committed to paper.

He didn’t know how many Bucky had already seen. Countless sketches, too many to recall even if his memory wasn’t permanently marred with cracks. How his body had often been the subject.

Bucky had learned, over the years, that there was a certain art to erasing memories. For all their best efforts, they knew that wiping a person completely left them erratic and fragile, quick to shatter no matter what new identity they were given. It was best to leave something intact, harmless bits of truth that could be strung together, preventing a person from coming apart.

So they’d left him his name. And art.

“What do you like to draw?” he asked, tentatively. He could tell that Steve was surprised by the lack of venom in his response, could see it in the way that his shoulders relaxed and a more genuine smile spread across his face. Genuine, but still shy.

“Uhm,” he replied, and Bucky wondered if he got this easily flustered with all the insane people he spoke with on a daily basis. “Different things. A building, a street scene. Strangers in the park.”

“I can’t draw worth shit,” he said, keeping his face serious so that Steve wouldn’t even consider the possibility that he was being self-deprecating. He couldn’t, but he wished he could. If he could, he would draw out every memory in perfect detail, show them to Steve. Hope they triggered something.

Words had no currency here.

“Something else, then,” Steve pressed. He was trying so hard, and Bucky, if he hadn’t already withered inside so long ago, might’ve humored him once. He lied when necessary, now. “Poetry?”

His lips curled at that. Oh, he could show them poetry. He could pen lines so graphic his instructor would stand, disrupting the unity of their circle, and stop him as he spoke, the blood draining from her face.

He realized he was chuckling out loud, that Steve was now frowning. He hadn’t meant to do that.

“Reading, then,” the other man suggested. “Just reading a good book.”

Bucky smiled wistfully at that. He had enjoyed reading, once. He could remember his back propped against a hard wall, feet tucked underneath him on the bed, an open book in his hands. Steve’s eyes on him, the soft scratch of his pencil as he drew him, and Bucky tried not to show in his face that he knew, not show what it did to his body to feel that gaze.

“I do like to read,” he agreed. He wasn’t sure if it was still true.

“There you go,” Steve said quickly. The relief in his voice was palatable. 

Bucky heard the harsh squeal of the chair dragging backwards against the linoleum, and his head jerked up. He realized that Steve was leaving, but he was doing it in a way that played at being natural.

He paused as he stood, and Bucky tried not to let the disappointment show in his eyes as he looked up at him. He did have a job to do, even if it wasn’t real.

“You should stop by the library today,” Steve said encouragingly. He smiled, and Bucky could see the vaguest sense of satisfaction hidden in his blue eyes, the mild joy at the knowledge that he had, somehow, helped. “Find something new.”

Bucky nodded, although he had no intention of going to the library.

“Bye,” he said under his breath, long after Steve had walked away.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

The doctor assigned to his case had a German accent. This, Bucky was almost certain, was a detail designed simply to taunt him.

He let himself into her office, walking immediately toward the ratty sofa cushion across from her desk that marked his place.

“Good afternoon, James,” she said. Her voice was always pleasant, but she didn’t take her eyes off him when he moved. She was the one person, out of all the staff, that Bucky suspected may not be brainwashed to play a role. She could be the real thing.

Once seated, he lifted his eyes toward her, wondering if today would go any differently. They have a routine together, and rarely do they go off script.

Once it was clear he didn’t intend to respond to her greeting, she simply continued.

“And how has your day been today?” she asked. She leaned forward, not breaking eye contact. She generally did not allow him to evade direct questions.

“Had worse,” he replied. It was always true. For all that he hated being trapped here, there was no one that he was being forced to murder.

“Good,” she replied briskly, giving him a tight smile. “James, can you tell me where we are?”

He smiled a little at that. 

“We are in a facility designed by HYDRA to break me,” he answered.

He watched as she sighed, pushing her glasses a little higher up the bridge of her nose.

“HYDRA,” she repeated. “The modern day Neo-Nazi terrorist organization currently persecuting you.”

“I was one of numerous Assets,” he clarified. He liked to keep his voice monotone during these exchanges, almost aggressive, as if he might lash out. “Their goal is to send the world into chaos and seize power in the aftermath. So that they can build their idea of an ideal society.”

“I see,” the doctor replied tiredly. “But they are targeting you, specifically, because …”

She let her voice trail off. These sessions were tedious but, at least, often predictable.

“They conducted experiments on me,” he answered. “Did things. To make me stronger.”

“Did things,” she echoed. She liked to parrot back his words, as if by saying them in her own raspy, skeptical voice, he would suddenly realize they were lies. “You described to me once that they used drugs. Special drugs, am I right? You called it a serum.”

“Yes,” he confirmed.

“And this made you into what you called, a ‘Supersoldier,’” she continued. She opened his file briefly, as if checking that this was the correct word, but of course she knew. “Is that right?”

“Yes,” he said again.

“And this makes you uniquely special to HYDRA,” she went on.

“Yes,” he said, tersely. A third time.

She pursed her lips, pausing a moment before going on. She made it a point to look directly into his eyes. She had blue eyes, but they weren’t like Steve’s. They were hollowed out, and cold, and reminded him of his own.

“Tell me, James,” she asked, almost conversationally. “Have you ever tried to bend the bars on the windows?”

“What?” he asked, his lip curling. Of course he knew what she was talking about. Of course he had. They probably had it on surveillance, somewhere. And they hadn’t budged.

“The bars on the windows,” she repeated. “You’ve claimed HYDRA is holding you prisoner, here. It goes without saying that you would make some attempt to escape.”

“I have,” he confirmed. He felt his muscles begin to tense, and he forced himself to relax. There was no point in getting upset, but he hated, hated, being mocked this way.

“And did they move?” she asked. Her voice was so innocent. Bucky wanted to throw himself across the room, slide across her desk on his stomach and strangle her, watch her eyes bulge as she struggled for her last breath, not realizing she’d already taken it.

“No,” he repied, through gritted teeth.

“I see,” she said. Her voice sounded almost disappointed. “But, if you have unique physical abilities, shouldn’t you be able to –“

“There are special kinds of metal,” he snapped. He monitored his breathing. In, in, in, out. 

“That’s right,” the doctor said, nodding multiple times. “I remember. You explained that to me. They made your arm out of a special kind of metal, didn’t they?”

He sucked in as much air as he could through his nose. They didn’t always work around to discussing his arm, but when they did, it was always more difficult to stay calm. He hated talking about the arm. She knew that.

She was staring at him patiently, waiting for an answer.

“Yes,” he mumbled.

“You described to me several times how HYDRA used the metal arm as an indirect form of torture,” she said. She lifted the pages of his file again, letting the corners fall slowly back to the desk as if she were reviewing them, but she hardly scanned the words. “It had a practical purpose, you told me. It was meant to be a weapon. But to install and maintain it they performed surgery on you, without the use of any kind of anesthetic.”

He couldn’t help it, he was starting to shake. Most days, it was possibly not to remember. Not to think about those times, in detail, even as he was surrounded by the same people who had ordered it done to him. But in these sessions, where he was required to speak –

“I don’t like to talk,” he said, slowly, forcing the words out, “About that.”

“I know,” she replied. Her voice was low and sugary-sweet and patronizing, like she was addressing a crying child. “I know you don’t, James. But we discussed how it’s important to face the subjects that make us uncomfortable, so that we can look deeper, and discover the truth.”

“That is the truth,” he gasped. He was remembering, now, when they had repaired a seam with a blowtorch, the skin around the metal bubbling up, raw and red and white, too deep even to bleed –

“I believe you, James,” his doctor went on gently. “I do. I believe you were hurt, very badly. But I don’t think it was HYDRA, that hurt you.”

Bucky lowered his head. He felt an old urge to wrap his arms around himself, curl into his chest, but it wasn’t the same, with just one arm. It wasn’t as comforting.

He looked to the side instead, to the empty sleeve where his arm had once been. First the real one, then the metal. It was a small reassurance, that with the arm gone, at least there was no need for – maintenance.

“I think that someone else hurt you,” she continued. “And you created the story about the arm as a way to process that. To take that pain and give it a place in the world you’ve created in your mind, because maintaining that world, maintaining the existence of HYDRA, is the only thing holding your identity together now.”

“They did give me an arm,” he all but choked out.

The doctor straightened her spine a little, her face pinching along with the shift in her posture.

“Where is the arm now, James?” she asked, slowly.

He had to breathe. He had to remain calm, composed. It was always worse if he fell apart.

“They removed it,” he said. His voice was small, far away. “They took it back.”

“I see,” his doctor repeated. She was nodding along with him sympathetically. “Do you remember them taking it back?”

He did remember, yes, he did remember, because he’d fought. He’d fought every step of the way and they had to use half a dozen agents just to force him into the chair and strap him down, and he’d fought even after that, jerking and pulling his shoulder as much as he could, but it had only made it worse for him. They hadn’t cared about precision. They’d snapped his veins like loose threads, sawing away into the muscle until he’d heard the dull thud of the arm hitting the floor.

“James?” his doctor was asking, patiently. So patiently. Giving him plenty of time. “Do you remember when they took back your arm?”

“Yes,” he choked out. Yes, because it was true, and yes, to make this stop.

“But why would they do that, James? If it made you useful to HYDRA? If it made you a weapon?” she pressed.

In moments like these, it became hard to think, hard to rationalize. Her questions began to make sense, and he hated himself for letting it get to that point, letting himself become so undone that he couldn’t tell reality from fiction.

“Because,” he said, slowly. He had to keep saying it. He had to keep repeating the truth. When the day came that he couldn’t, they would win. “If I still had the arm, I’d be using it to kill you.”

He watched as she took in a slow breath, sitting back in her office chair. She frowned, shaking her head slowly. Like he was a child that had talked back in the worst way.

“Oh, James,” she said, her voice dripping with disappointment. “I care about you, I do, and I want you to succeed. I know that you’re in pain, but – the freedom that you have now, as a patient, is a privilege. You don’t want your privileges taken away, do you?”

It occurred to Bucky, suddenly, that Steve might be one of those privileges.

“No,” he said, as quickly as the thought entered his mind. “I – that isn’t what I meant to say. I meant to say that the arm would make me dangerous.”

A small smile graced the doctor’s face, and she nodded.

“I see,” she said, and there was a strange satisfaction to her voice. “But you aren’t dangerous anymore, are you, James? I think you’re realizing that. I think you’re feeling vulnerable.”

Bucky wasn’t sure what to say to that. He sat there, numbly, aware that he’d just done what he’d once sworn never to do again. He’d submitted.

But they had changed the game. He couldn’t play with Steve’s life the way he could his own.

“The world doesn’t have to be run by HYDRA,” his doctor continued. “To be a frightening place. I want to help you, James, prepare yourself to face the world again. The real world.”

He nodded. He nodded, because there was nothing he could say. Nothing he could do.

“I think this is a good stopping point for today,” she said, glancing toward the clock. “I know that this is challenging for you, at times. But this is how we move forward.”

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Later, Bucky would realize that he didn’t remember leaving the room. Everything picked up with him rushing into the bathroom, not even bothering to lock the door of the stall behind him as he knelt in front of the toilet. He could hear the door, swinging on creaky hinges, as he gagged and brought up his lunch.

It was still recognizable. Yellow-orange ooze around macaroni noodles, mixing with a blob of red. Jello. It looked like blood at first, though, like a hunk of flesh, and that made him vomit more.

He heard a soft knock on the stall door, even though it hung open a few inches.

“James?” a concerned voice asked. 

He knew it. He would know that voice anywhere.

He worked up as much spit as he could into his mouth, diluting some of the bile and lessening the burn. Then he spit into the toilet, drawing the back of his hand roughly back over his mouth.

“It’s Bucky,” he said, intending for the words to snap, but his name came out crumbled, and weak, and he realized that he was going to cry. Tears burned at the edge of his vision, humiliating tears that stung far worse than the burn in his throat.

“Just hold on, okay?” the voice said hurriedly. “I’m just going to get you some water.”

He nodded silently, even though he knew Steve couldn’t see him. He listened to his heavy footsteps as he half-ran out of the bathroom, the sound echoing hollowly against the tile. It felt like he returned almost immediately.

He opened the stall door slowly, hesitantly, and Bucky looked up at him from where he was, back against the wall and next to the toilet, knees drawn up to his chin. Steve looked shocked, for a moment, and he watched his Adam’s apple bob as he lowered the plastic cup to him.

“Thank you,” Bucky said numbly. He took a little sip, because it was polite, and struggled not to let the tears overtake him.

He waited a long moment, too humiliated to look at him again, until Steve finally spoke.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asked, carefully. As if he wasn’t sure he should be asking at all.

Bucky blinked a few times, wondering how he could say it in a way that Steve could accept. In a way that didn’t make him sound even more insane.

“Difficult session,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Oh,” Steve replied. It sounded less surprised than sad. “Can I –“

“Please don’t tell them I’m crying,” he found himself saying, suddenly, the words spilling out of him with less elegance than the vomit. “Please don’t tell them, they’ll sedate me.”

“I won’t, Jame – Bucky,” Steve said. His voice was reverent, like he’d never been more sure about anything in his life, and Bucky clung to that. He let the sound of his own name, the right name, coming from Steve’s lips sink deep into him.

“I don’t need to be sedated,” he whispered.

“Bucky, I know,” Steve said. He was crouching down, and Bucky was embarrassed, embarrassed that he’d managed to make him crawl down to him next to a filthy toilet. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. Can I – can I touch you?”

His body froze up at the words, and Steve must’ve seen him flinch, because he pulled back a little himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “I’m not good at –“

“Yes,” Bucky found himself saying. Nearly crying the words as he whispered them. “Yes. You can touch me.”

He closed his eyes, waiting, bracing for it even as he gave permission. There was a long beat of silence, and then he felt a hand slip behind his neck, fingertips graze his slumped shoulder. The good one, that still ended in a limb.

The touch steadied, became firmer. Moving in slow, steady circles.

Bucky took in a deep breath, shuddering into his knees. He had tucked his head between them, and as fresh tears spilled silently over his cheeks, he hoped Steve couldn’t see.

In moments like this, Bucky began to wonder if he was already beginning to break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of testing the waters with this idea, I would love to hear feedback.


	2. Night Shift

She laid the knife in his open palm, and he curled his fingers around the handle slowly.

It wasn’t a delicate blade, designed for surgery. It had weight to it, the serrated edges catching small glints of the artificial light above them. It looked like the type of knife you could gut a deer with.

Now her hand was closing over his shoulder. 

“It’s your choice,” she said calmly. He didn’t take his eyes off the blade, but he knew her voice, recognized the weight of authority in it. It was his doctor, but he didn’t think that was who she was, anymore.

“If you’d like,” she continued, “You can stand aside and watch instead. But I think it might be better, coming from your own hand. You can offer words of comfort. You can try to be gentle.”

Her hold on his shoulder tightened.

“Just don’t take too much time,” she said, her voice dropping an octave in warning. “Or we will step in.”

“But what if I,” he heard himself saying, the doubt in his words nearly lost in the numbness.

“Don’t worry about precision,” she said, and her voice took on the edge of false comfort he remembered from their sessions. “Just sever the joint. The surgeons will clean up the rough edges.”

He nodded, and she released his shoulder.

He stepped forward, toward Steve. It was strange, to see someone else in the same position he’d taken so many times before, legs spread slightly, limbs strapped down to the chair. He realized he’d come to think of it as his own, his chair, but of course it wasn’t. Many people must’ve bled into the leather over the years.

He did something the technicians never did. He braced his knee on one side of the chair, and then the other, pulling the weight of his body up so that he was hovering over Steve’s hips. This way, he could look down into his eyes, whisper things that hopefully the semi-circle of onlookers couldn’t hear.

The intimacy of the position wasn’t lost on him. He tried not to think what he might have felt, positioning his body this way, under different circumstances.

He released the strap of leather that served as Steve’s gag, slowly pulling it to the side. He tried to ignore the way the other man’s wet eyes kept drifting toward the knife in his hand.

“Don’t do this,” Steve whimpered, as soon as his lips were free.

He tensed his jaw, taking in a steadying breath. He had tried to prepare himself for this – for Steve begging. He had begged, once.

“Steve,” he said, trying to put as much reverence, as much reassurance into his voice as he could, “If I do this myself –“

“I don’t want you to do it,” he said quickly. “Let them. Let them –“

“No, listen,” he said soothingly. “They enjoy it. They enjoy it too much. I can’t let them.”

Steve’s chest shuddered beneath him, and he laid his hand on the bare skin of his shoulder, even with the knife still curled in it. He hated to think of all that perfect flesh, so smooth and untouched, becoming as ragged with scars as his.

“Listen,” he went on. “I’m going to be quick, as quick as I can. I’m going to try and make it bleed as much as possible, so you’ll pass out. They won’t let you bleed out completely.”

“No,” Steve whispered, and god, he was crying. He was wrecked already, shaking with fear, and he hadn’t even started.

“If you feel yourself drifting,” he said, rushing the words a little, because they wouldn’t let it go on much longer, this talking. “Go. It’s better not to stay.”

“I don’t want it to be you,” Steve repeated. “Please, anything but –“

“They’ll make me watch,” he explained. His voice was heavy, and he wished he had time, time to make Steve understand, because he didn’t know them. He thought it couldn’t be worse than them taking the arm. “They’ll put on a show for me. I won’t let that happen.”

“Please,” Steve muttered. Tears were running freely down his face, and he frowned, trying not to let them affect his judgment. He needed to be calm, now. Calm, and efficient, as he’d once been so easily.

“Close your eyes,” he ordered, and he watched as Steve did, slowly, his body still shuddering against the hold of the straps. He wasn’t trying to escape. He just couldn’t help it.

He slid the strap back into Steve’s open mouth, securing it. 

Then, he slowly raised the knife, glad that he had listened. Glad that he wasn’t watching.

He raised it, tensing the muscles in his arm. He had to fight the instinct to be slow, and careful, and gentle, because that would draw it out, make it real torture. He had to put weight behind the first blow. He had to mean it, so it would be quick, and over soon.

He raised the blade a little higher. He was strong. He wondered if he could do it in as few as two, three strokes. 

He had to. This was for Steve.

He brought his hand down, trying not to hear the muffled scream beneath him. He wished he could close his eyes, too, but that wasn’t possible, even if they’d told him precision wasn’t necessary. He didn’t want to see the blood splash against his forearm, his shoulder, his chest.

He wanted to close his eyes, but even if he did he’d still hear the second scream, feel Steve’s body surge underneath him, stretching the straps to their limit. Still feel the warm blood coat his fingers, making them slide wetly against each other so that he had to readjust his hold on the knife.

A third blow and then the gag must’ve gotten loose because Steve was screaming, screaming, the sound filling the room around him –

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

He was screaming, screaming Steve’s name as he opened his eyes to the darkness. He couldn’t feel his body at first, and he kept screaming, not realizing that the hand curled around the knife wasn’t, that it was gripping a fistful of sheets –

He heard the door open with a loud click, the rush of heavy footsteps.

“Bucky,” a voice said, and he saw a form in the darkness, the outline of a body, but he couldn’t see. He didn’t see the hand reaching toward him.

The hand settled on his shoulder, the bad one, the empty one ending in scars, and every muscle in his body stiffened, frozen for a moment before he turned and swung.

He felt his fist connect against something, something hard and soft at the same time, heard a startled grunt, followed by a little gasp of pain. He felt something warm and wet on his knuckles, but he couldn’t see.

More footsteps, and the door clicked open again. This time, someone flicked on the light.

He winced, eyes squinting at the harsh white. But then, everything gradually came into focus, and he turned a little to his left.

Steve was standing there. There was blood, a few brilliant red drops staining the perfect white of his scrubs just below the collar. He raised his eyes a little, saw more red smeared against his hand. He was holding it to his face, covering his nose and lips and chin.

He looked down at his own hand, and the red shimmered there, too, fresh and wet and shining.

His mouth fell open, and he saw it again, the blood coating his fingers, the knife, the blade digging into the flesh, hacking it open, because he couldn’t be gentle, had to be quick, exposing the bone.

He screamed again, jerking his body back, kicking the mattress for leverage until his back was pressed against the wall and he couldn’t move anymore.

There were more footsteps, and he looked up, just enough to see another orderly, a syringe ready in his hand.

“Clint, stop,” a voice said, Steve’s voice, although it was strangely muffled. He thought immediately of the gag, and his body seized a little against the wall.

“He punched you!” another voice shot back. He didn’t know this voice. “Seriously, Steve.”

The second orderly made a few steps toward the bed, and Bucky braced himself, waiting for the moment when he would become too close.

“He was having a nightmare,” Steve’s muffled voice said. Pleaded.

The other orderly, also blond, shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and turned back toward the bed. He raised the syringe in his hand, the way that Bucky had raised the knife, as he advanced.

“It’s okay,” Bucky found himself saying. He looked past the other orderly, trying, suddenly, to meet Steve’s eyes. The room was not only bright now – it was blurry. He realized he must’ve been crying, too. “I want it.”

He couldn’t see the expression on Steve’s face, because his mouth was still obscured by his bloody hand. But he saw his eyes widen, and they looked sad.

“I want it,” he repeated. And he didn’t resist when the other orderly loomed over him, pushing the needle deep into the muscle of his arm.

Later, when he groggily opened his eyes in the dark, empty and hollow and untouched by hours of dreamless sleep, he would realize why. 

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

He paused as he laid his hand over the doorknob, feeling more apprehensive than usual. He knew, after what had happened, that this would not be a typical session. There had to be repercussions.

Taking in a quick breath, he opened the door.

His doctor was seated at her desk, as she always was, his file laid out neatly in front of her. She didn’t smile as she glanced toward him, as her eyes followed him to the ratty couch.

No. This would not be a typical session.

“James,” she said, by way of greeting. Her voice was dark, almost solemn. “I’d like to discuss the incident that occurred last night.”

“Is he all right?” he asked, his voice quiet. He hadn’t realized he was going to ask until the words slipped from him.

“His nose is broken,” she replied coldly. 

Bucky lowered his head, breathing shallowly. He could see Steve in his mind’s eye, holding a hand over his face as blood dripped from his chin. Hear his voice as he tried to stop the other orderly from injecting him as he cowered against the wall.

“I’m surprised, James,” his doctor continued, when he said nothing. “In all your time with us, you’ve never assaulted one of our staff members.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” he said, slowly, and with regret, but also certainty. It was a rare exception – to be in this office, on this couch, and be speaking the absolute truth. “I was – it was a nightmare.”

He kept his head lowered, not because he was afraid of his doctor’s disapproving stare, but because he felt disgusted with himself. Of all the people he could choose to hurt, his mind, his body, had chosen Steve.

“I see,” his doctor said, quietly. “I assumed as much. You know, James – whenever a staff member suffers an injury in the workplace, we have to make a very thorough inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the incident.”

He furrowed his brow at her words. Her voice was tense, patronizing, almost as if she was taunting him. Suggesting that she knew he was hiding something.

He looked up, confusion written across his features.

“We interviewed both Mr. Barton and Mr. Rogers after the incident,” she went on. “Mr. Barton shared an interesting detail in his report.”

Barton, his mind thought, hesitating over the name. It sounded familiar. But there had been so many reports, so many people. So many victims.

He realized his doctor was waiting for him to respond. Confess. Except he had no idea what she was getting at.

“What detail?” he asked, not bothering to be as curt and impatient as he usually would be. He was already in enough trouble as it was, and he still didn’t know how they intended to punish him.

“When they entered your room, you were screaming a name,” she answered, clearly choosing her words with care. “’Steve’.”

He swallowed. He hadn’t remembered that.

“Oh,” he said, his mind freezing up. 

“It’s quite a coincidence,” she continued leisurely. “That of all the staff members who might’ve come to help you, the one who did was also named Steve.”

His muscles tensed. They had to know that he knew Steve, that he recognized him. It had to be part of the reason he was here. Why did they need to hear him say it?

“It’s a common name,” he said, carefully.

“So in your nightmare,” she went on, pushing her glasses absently up the bridge of her nose, “You were dreaming about the Steve you’ve mentioned from your - past. Not Mr. Rogers, the staff member.”

They’re the same person, his mind hissed, but he didn’t want to say that. He couldn’t say that.

“Yes,” he said automatically, instead.

“Thank you for clarifying that for me, James,” she said curtly, and he frowned, dread pooling in his stomach. He could tell when she didn’t believe him.

She picked through the pile of papers in front of her, pulling out something he didn’t think he’d seen before. It looked mostly handwritten.

“This is the statement Mr. Barton provided us,” she said, holding it up a little, offering it to him. “Would you like to see it?”

He shook his head immediately. Early on, she’d offered to let him see a number of papers from his file, treating them like pieces of evidence that she could use to convince him. He’d never needed to see the papers.

“No? All right,” she said, clearly anticipating his refusal. “In this statement, Mr. Barton mentions how he witnessed you and Mr. Rogers talking together.”

His blood ran cold at that, and he tensed, willing his body not to give away how much that statement piqued his fear.

“Is that – wrong?” he asked, wanting to make it sarcastic. Instead, he simply sounded confused, which he increasingly was. He didn’t like that they were so interested, suddenly, in what transpired between him and Steve.

“No,” his doctor answered. “We generally don’t encourage staff to become too friendly with the patients, of course, but it’s natural. When you’re around the same people day in and day out, it’s hard not to become curious. Hard to maintain strict professional distance.”

She waited, giving him a moment to formulate a response, but he simply stared forward. He was still lost in the question of what they wanted from him.

“Please don’t misunderstand me, James,” she said. She smiled at him tightly, and the sight of it turned his stomach. “This is a positive step for you. You’re typically very withdrawn, even in our sessions together. I know you don’t socialize with the other patients.”

He nodded. Of course she knew that. And it was true, in any case. He didn’t see a point in interacting with anyone else.

“Can you tell me what it is about Mr. Rogers, that makes you feel comfortable speaking casually with him?” she asked. She folded her hands together on her desk, staring into him, waiting. This was clearly a question she wouldn’t let him evade easily.

He thought for a moment, running his mind through safe, acceptable answers. He thought of Steve’s eyes, often cautious around him, but also gentle and sympathetic.

“He’s nice to me,” he said. It was possibly the most vague thing he could say, and he knew it wouldn’t be enough. But talking about Steve felt like betraying him.

“I see,” his doctor answered, pausing for a moment before she went on. “But I imagine a majority of the orderlies are nice to you. Your instructors, your leaders in group therapy. Or do you feel that you’re treated unkindly here, James?”

He pursed his lips at that, but willed back his urge to lash out.

“No,” he said, slowly. Trying, despite his words, to convey his disgust. “I’m not treated – unkindly. Here.”

She sat back, relaxing into her office chair. She did that, sometimes, when it seemed she was particularly satisfied. He glanced up, narrowing his eyes. 

“So then there’s something special,” she said, smiling a little, but it was mocking, he was sure of it. “About Mr. Roger’s kindness?”

He wanted to backhand Steve’s name out of her mouth, grateful, at least, that she didn’t use his first name. 

But he still had to answer. Had to come up with something that didn’t betray how well he knew Steve, that made it sound like they’d only just met, that Steve simply took pity on him. Which, in a way, was true, if Steve were here to answer the question himself.

“It’s different with him,” Bucky found himself saying, trying to make his words vague, but also genuine. “I think – I think he wants to help me.”

This answer, finally, seemed to satisfy his doctor. She smiled a little, again, the tight, smug smile that he hated.

“But it confuses me, James,” she began, and he could tell that she was smug. That she felt, already, that she’d somehow won something from him. “You’ve told me that you believe this facility is run by HYDRA. And Mr. Rogers is a member of our staff, so – wouldn’t that make Mr. Rogers a member of HYDRA, as well?”

He was cornered. Maybe he never should’ve talked to Steve, even just that one, innocent conversation about ‘hobbies’. It was coming back to haunt him.

And yet he knew, even if he’d been able to anticipate this, he wouldn’t have been able to resist. He couldn’t stay away from him, couldn’t pretend that well.

“They have him, too,” Bucky stated, deciding, simply, to relent.

His doctor considered that for a long moment. She raised her eyebrow a little, clearly intrigued by his admission.

“You believe he’s an innocent,” she began, her voice questioning, “Like you?”

“I’m no innocent,” he snapped immediately, his hands curling into fists over his thighs. Her eyes widened a little at that, as if startled, but she pressed on.

“I think you know what I mean by that, James,” she said, leaning almost imperceptibly toward him. “You believe he’s being held here by HYDRA. He just simply – isn’t aware of it?”

He gritted his teeth. He was getting tired of feeding her answers she clearly already had at her fingertips.

“You believe,” she continued, her voice slightly incredulous, as if even she, the professional, couldn’t hold back her opinion of how ridiculous it all was, “They wiped his memory and took him over? The way that they once did, to you?”

He didn’t answer. He was done answering, done explaining.

In the silence that followed, he watched as his doctor settled back into her seat again, considering the implications of his words. She was about to monologue, he knew. About to pull something vaguely profound out of her ass and present it to him, and then send him on his merry way.

“It’s always difficult for me to hear, James, how deeply invested you are in your delusions,” she began, and he congratulated himself on being right. “Because I’ve tried, we’ve tried, for so long, to help you break free of them.”

Just say I can go, his mind whispered, numbly. He glanced openly toward the door, not caring if she noticed. 

“But, in a way,” she continued, “I’m also encouraged by the way that you believe there are good people in the world. Kind people. I’d like you to consider what possibilities could open up to you if you simply accepted that HYDRA isn’t real. That you could move on, have a life outside of these walls. Connect with people that will be kind to you.”

When he said nothing, merely stared at her in the way he knew made most people deeply, deeply uncomfortable, she sighed.

“I think that’s enough for today,” she said, and he stood immediately, ready to all but race for the door. He made it a few steps forward before she stopped him.

“James?” she said. He turned around slowly. She didn’t usually add anything else after her monologue was over.

He stopped, waiting, and she frowned up at him.

“I’m prescribing you a new medication to help you sleep,” she said simply. “These nightmares can’t keep happening. We can’t have further incidents. And you need your rest, so that you can focus during the day on getting better.”

His jaw tensed at this news, although he really didn’t care. If they actually helped him sleep, great, but he doubted it. He was fairly certain the pills he took each day were nothing more than sugar pills. His attempt to hoard them had just been a desperate Hail Mary.

“Fine, more pills,” he snapped, turning around without another word.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

He waited three days to see Steve. When he finally appeared in the dayroom with his tray of little paper cups, he nearly overturned the plastic chair he was sitting in in his haste to stand.

Thankfully, most people seemed to hate standing too close to him, meaning that when he finally reached the front of the line, the patient behind him had given him a wide berth. Wide enough that he could actually talk to Steve with relative privacy.

He almost regretted how eager he had been, though, when he saw his face up close. There was some kind of bandage over the bridge of his nose, and beneath it, the pale flesh had turned violent purple, bleeding out toward his cheeks and upper lip like especially bright watercolor.

His mouth fell open when he was finally in front of him, forced to confront the aftermath of what he’d done. He lowered his head, heart clenching painfully in his chest.

But he didn’t have many opportunities to speak to Steve, and he had to say something.

“Hey,” the other man said first, gently. Bucky raised his eyes.

“You’re back,” he mumbled, glancing away. He still couldn’t keep his gaze steady on that horrible bruise.

“Yeah,” Steve answered easily, almost brightly. His voice still sounded a little weird, nasal and slightly muffled. “They gave me a couple days off to let the swelling go down.”

“Fuck,” Bucky said under his breath. As much as he didn’t deserve to so much as touch him, he wanted to reach out, wrap his arms around him, cry the next words over and over into his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” Steve said immediately. He hovered a little closer, but he couldn’t get much nearer to him, not with the tray of meds between them. “I know it was a nightmare. I know you didn’t mean it.”

“Still,” Bucky said, biting his lower lip. “I’m so fucking sorry. I won’t do it again.”

He said these last words imploringly, realizing what they meant. He didn’t want Steve to be afraid of him. He didn’t want him to be afraid to talk to him, or help him, or offer him comfort.

“I’m not worried about that,” Steve said firmly. God, it was exactly what he needed to hear. “And I was stupid. I shouldn’t have reached out like that. I shouldn’t have touched you.”

Bucky shook his head, quickly, adamantly.

“It’s not your fault,” he said. He shifted uncomfortably, realizing that there was a line of patients behind him. Not that any of them were in any real rush, but still.

Steve seemed to realize this too, looking briefly beyond Bucky before leaning forward a little.

“I wanted to let you know,” he said quickly. “I might not see you as much. They switched more of my days over to the night shift.”

Bucky frowned, his eyebrows dropping and furrowing together in concern. Was this how they were going to punish him? Make it even harder to see and talk to Steve?

“Why?” he asked, licking his lips, and disappointment must’ve been obvious on his face, because Steve’s eyes softened, and he frowned back sadly.

“I don’t know,” he answered. 

He held out Bucky’s cup of pills, finally, and Bucky tipped them down his throat, swallowing effortlessly before quickly sticking out his tongue.

“But don’t worry,” Steve continued, his voice falsely brightening. “I’ll still see you every morning Monday and Wednesday. Gotta make sure you take your meds.”

Bucky tried to smile a little at that, at his blatant attempt to be cheerful about it, but he couldn’t. Two days. That meant five days without him.

“Guess I’ll see you Wednesday, then,” he said, trying, and failing, to keep the sadness out of his voice.

Steve frowned, but deeply, too deeply. It made Bucky pause, and blink, and deepen his own frown.

“What?” he asked, suddenly confused.

“Bucky,” Steve said, dropping his voice to a whisper. His voice was urgent with concern, but also sad. So sad. “It is Wednesday.”

Bucky blinked again a few times, the knowledge settling over him. He felt his cheeks go hot. He didn’t usually keep track of days, just his schedule. It hadn’t seemed to matter, anymore.

“Oh,” he said, trying not to make it obvious how embarrassed he was. So he wouldn’t see Steve until he made it through today, and then another four days after that.

His shoulders slumped, and Steve tried to smile for him again, but he didn’t seem to have the heart for it either.

“Keep reading, okay?” he said gently.

Bucky nodded. He knew he had to go. He knew the line of patients behind him had to be getting restless.

He couldn’t bear to admit to Steve that he didn’t read. He didn’t do anything anymore. He drifted. He existed. Sometimes he slept. He survived, and he hadn’t been sure why, until he’d seen Steve again.

And now, he would be counting days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I truly appreciate any feedback. It's incredibly validating and motivating to me and thank you so, so much if you have time to share your thoughts.


	3. Knock Knock

Bucky laid himself out on the twin bed, resting his hand on his stomach. He didn’t bother to close his eyes. He’d already shut off the light, and in his little windowless room, it didn’t make a difference.

In some ways, this was his favorite part of the day – the part set aside for trying to sleep. He was temporarily left alone, and there were no staff members he was forced to make eye contact with, no activities he was forced to struggle through one-handed, no self-reflections he was required to vaguely bullshit.

But then, the absence of those very things opened the door to it being terrifying. With no distractions, his mind spiraled out of control, and, particularly in sleep, memories could seep forward into his consciousness, coloring everything in red. 

Or, worse, the hazy yellow of the city in the morning, making their ancient floorboards glow and dancing pinpricks of dust suddenly visible, everything old and worn instantly becoming beautiful, and he wondered if this was how Steve saw the world all the time, when he picked up a piece of char –

There was a knock at his door.

He blinked, his shoulders stiffening. Had he been dreaming? No, not yet.

The knock came again. It was soft, almost tentative, as if the person on the other side of the door was sure he was disturbing him. This was strange, because usually the knocks were brisk and cold, following by a monotone reminder: breakfast in fifteen minutes. Lights out in ten.

Once, they had knocked twice only to burst open the door immediately afterward. He’d found that particularly disgusting – why bother to knock at all? Then they’d searched his room and found the stolen paintbrush he’d whittled down to a knifepoint. 

The knock came a third time, still gentle. He threw his legs over the side of the bed, walking through the darkness with no hesitation. 

He opened the door, his hand freezing and clutching harder on the doorknob when he saw who it was.

“Hey,” Steve said gently. Even in the harsh artificial light, his blond hair still glowed above his face like a halo.

“Hi,” Bucky replied, licking his dry lips. He looked behind Steve, but there was no one else. And the other man seemed relaxed, cheerful even, so there didn’t seem to be anything wrong.

“I’m sorry if you were already sleeping,” Steve continued. Bucky blinked a few times before realizing that behind him, anyone could see that the room was dark.

“It usually takes a few hours,” he replied. He frowned uncertainly. “At least, I think so. I don’t have a clock in there.”

Steve’s smile faltered a little at that, and it made Bucky want to kick himself. He needed to spend more time thinking of things he could say that would make him smile, instead. Even if they were lies.

“Speaking of that,” the blond man said. He held up a familiar little paper cup. “Special delivery.”

The sleep meds. He’d almost forgotten about them. 

“Oh,” he found himself saying. “Right.”

Steve offered him the little cup, and he dumped the pill into his hand. It was tiny, round and innocent and robin’s egg blue.

“I hope it helps,” the orderly offered, and the genuine way he formed the words made Bucky’s heart clench a little. He wished he could explain to Steve that nothing helped, that nothing was meant to help, but those were words for another time.

For now, he threw the little pill to the back of his throat, swallowing and letting Steve see his empty tongue, taking those few seconds to stare at his face, to savor it.

When he didn’t answer, Steve looked behind him again, the light from the hallway flooding his little room. It was sparse – two twins beds, one untouched. A nightstand, a light for reading. Nothing else. He didn’t have things of his own. They weren’t even allowed to have their own towels.

“Where’s your book?” the other man asked. Bucky looked back into the room as if expecting to find it there, then remembered, suddenly, his promise to go to the library.

He was forgetting too many things. He needed to start keeping better track.

“Oh,” he said again. He looked down, pursing his lips together. He couldn’t tell Steve that he didn’t care, that a book would be as useless as the little blue pill. That would make his forced smile even sadder, and Bucky couldn’t have that. “I –“

He stammered, unsure what excuse he could possibly use. He certainly hadn’t been too busy.

“Too many to choose from?” Steve offered. Bucky clung to that, his breath escaping him in a rush of relief. He nodded.

“Do you want me to pick one out for you?” the other man asked.

Bucky did. He wanted something, anything, that had once been held carefully in Steve’s warm hands, anything stained with his invisible fingerprints. It didn’t need to be a book.

“Yes,” he said, trying to cut the eagerness, the desperation from his voice. “That’d be – yeah.”

Steve’s smile brightened a little at that. It made Bucky’s heart feel lighter, but he also realized, standing there in the doorway, other orderlies shuffling about in the hallway, that they were already out of time. Every word between them was rationed.

“Okay,” the blond agreed. “No problem. I’ll get it to you as soon as I can.”

“Are you always going to bring me the sleep meds?” Bucky asked suddenly. He felt greedy, edgy at the idea that he might have to open his door to anyone else, squander any opportunity.

Steve hesitated before he answered. His smile didn’t falter, but his eyes looked a little taken aback, as if he were surprised at the insistent way Bucky asked. 

He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not, if he’d scared him. 

“I think so,” the taller man answered. His voice was warm, reassuring, and that soothed his sudden anxiety. “At least, when I’m on the night shift.”

Bucky was suddenly annoyed, that HYDRA insisted on keeping up appearances enough to give the staff a weekend, to vary their schedule and keep it at eight hours a day. If they would only give up their pretenses, he could have Steve every night, every day –

But that was absurd. If HYDRA didn’t want to keep up appearances, he’d just be in a cell, and they’d probably just torture Steve in front of him, break him quickly and easily that way, snap him like a twig until he was begging for his best friend’s life and willing to do anything again, kill anyone, anyone else -

“Bucky?” Steve’s voice, cutting in suddenly. He blinked.

He’d gotten lost in his thoughts. He looked up, remembering what Steve had just said – he’d be bringing him the little blue pill when he was working the night shift.

He let himself smile a little, though he struggled with it. He wasn’t sure if it was real or fake.

Good, he wanted to say. Good. I want it to be you. Every time. I want every second.

“Okay,” he said. He swallowed hard behind his tight smile.

Steve hesitated again. Bucky waited, hovering in front of him. It almost felt as if he wanted to reach out, to touch him, reassuringly, and Bucky wished he would. He’d let him, he wouldn’t even flinch.

“Sleep well,” the other man said instead, with a softness that Bucky knew wasn’t meant as an order or an expectation, but a real hope. “No more nightmares.”

No more nightmares. Everyone seemed to be saying that. It made him want to drop his own pretenses and laugh, just laugh out loud until his throat was raw and he had to face it again.

“I’ll try,” he promised. 

He closed the door, returning to the darkness.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

His eyes slid open. Something was wrong.

Every night, and every morning, he opened his eyes to blackness. He could remember a time when it was different. When he’d open his eyes and the white sheets would be pink and orange and grey, and he’d know instinctively that it was too early to wake up. Then he’d shift his weight, but cautiously, careful not to wake him, not to move the arm slung over his thin chest. Then he’d go effortlessly back to sleep.

Now, it could be dawn or three a.m. or even the bright afternoon of the next day, and he wouldn’t know. It would just be black, heavy and empty over him, and he’d have to wait for the knock to come on his door.

Now, something was wrong. He opened his eyes, and the light was grey.

He blinked, sitting up a little. His eyes widened when he saw it.

His door was open. Light was seeping in from the hallway, contaminating the dark.

He stiffened in his bed, unsure what to make of this. On the one hand, it was wrong, and when things happened that were wrong, that were unusual, it didn’t bode well with him. As suffocating as the routine was, change felt dangerous.

But an open door was also inviting. Tempting. So different from what he regularly encountered.

Still hazy with sleep, he threw his legs over the side of his bed, carefully sliding out from beneath the blanket. He made sure to step lightly, to keep his feet silent, just in case.

He approached the door, cautiously stretching his head over the threshold. He looked to the left, and then the right.

No one was there.

That was wrong. There was always someone there, sometimes multiple someones, pairs of orderlies talking together in low voices to pass the time. Always someone that could see him and drag him back to his windowless room, or else he would’ve wandered long ago.

He stepped into the hallway, tensing, as if making this move would set off some kind of alarm. There was nothing – but the nothing was overwhelming. The silence was heavy, looming over and around him like the thick heat of summer, only cold.

Except – there was a voice.

It was far away, but strong, confident. Although he couldn’t make out the words, he knew this was not the voice of someone afraid to be caught outside their room.

He found himself walking forward, following it. He passed the doors of the other patients, all closed, all silent. The voice became stronger, echoing slightly in the empty halls, humming under his skin as he approached the source.

He rounded a corner, into the day room, and found it.

It was the television. It shouldn’t be on, it was never on after lights out but now it was, flickering and bright and alive with shifting grey images. He moved forward, letting the voice run over him in waves and then cut into his veins as he recognized it, recognized the words.

It wasn’t monotone, exactly, but it was empty, in a way. Solid and unquestionable, rich with authority.

“… quickly earned their stripes. Their mission, taking down HYDRA, the Nazi rogue science –“

He shivered at the word, one he hadn’t heard in so long except from the mouth of his doctor, who said it differently, with a lilt of skepticism. But the images – the images were far worse.

He closed in on the television, eyes locked on the screen. He took step after step until he was almost too close, and then he dropped to his knees, barely feeling the cool, hard linoleum of the floor as it rose up to meet him.

He remembered this. He’d watched these images, stared at them until he became concerned he might stand out, then had circled the exhibit again only to come back to them.

It was a short loop, and there was no color, but it was overwhelming, it was more than enough. There they were, both of them, briefly assessing battle plans in the back of a truck. Then the film cut off, cut to a different scene, the two of them laughing together.

He reached out, pressing his fingertips into the screen over Steve’s smile. It was warm, crackling with electricity. It looked so real –

It was real, he reminded himself in wonder, it was real –

And the smile was so wide and honest, nothing like Steve’s sad, restrained smiles here, and he was smiling too, so much that he couldn’t hold it back, had to close his eyes and look down because if he’d looked at Steve in that moment his heart might have burst and then everyone would –

“… inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield. Barnes is the only …”

He hadn’t realized he was crying until the tears blurred his vision, washed out the images. He tried to blink them away, but more came, and he couldn’t. He kept his fingers pressed to the warm glass of the screen, as if that could hold the pictures there, keep alive the connection between that life and this. 

Then sobs were taking over his chest, heavy and shuddering, and he had to look away. His legs went numb underneath him, tingling painfully under his stiff knees.

And then a hand was on his shoulder, sudden and rough.

He jolted, spinning his head around. For a moment, he was almost hopeful. If it was Steve –

If it was Steve, he could show him the images. Let him watch, let him see himself, let the realization trickle back like a dammed-off stream slowly breaking, as it had been for him. Show him who he was.

But it wasn’t Steve. It was the orderly who had sedated him during the nightmare. He couldn’t remember his name.

“You aren’t supposed to be out of your room,” he said. His voice was low, rough with both surprise and annoyance.

His mouth fell open, and the tears drying on his face made his skin feel tight.

“Come on,” the orderly said. “Get up.”

And then he was pulling at him, jerking him up by his good shoulder, and Bucky stumbled as he stood, because his legs were still half-asleep. Under normal circumstances the touch would’ve paralyzed him, made him tense up and fight the urge to fight, but now –

He felt weak, gutless, and he let the orderly stand him up, start dragging him down the hallway to his room.

He looked back briefly, hoping. But the television screen was black.

“Listen,” the orderly hissed, mouth flush against his ear as they half-stumbled, half-walked down the hallway. “Steve has this protective – thing for you. I don’t get it, but I’m going to do you a solid, okay? I’m going to put you back in your room, and you’re going to stay there, and I’m not going to tell anyone.”

Bucky’s mind was reeling. He felt dizzy and sick, and he wasn’t sure if it was in his head or his body, from all the rough jostling around like a boneless ragdoll. He heard the orderly curse under his breath when he didn’t respond.

“Come on, man,” he said. They kept moving, one clumsy step at a time. “Stay with me. I’m not going to tell this time, okay? But you have to stay in your room.”

“I will,” Bucky said finally, weakly. He thought about asking to go to the bathroom instead. He thought he might throw up.

“Good,” the blond man said. His voice seemed satisfied. A few more zombie-like steps, and they were at his door.

“I won’t cover for you again,” the orderly warned, sternly, as he opened the door for him. “Stay. All right?”

“All right,” Bucky heard himself echo. The voice was still playing in his mind.

‘… the only Howling Commando to give his …’

The orderly shut the door behind him, and then it was black again. He stepped forward, reeling, until his knees bumped against the mattress. He fell onto it, dazed, and after a few moments he realized the tears were fresh again.

‘… to give his life in service of …’

Of what? He couldn’t remember.

He couldn’t remember. He was already forgetting.

He rolled onto his back, gasping hollowly. Steve’s smile was burned into his mind, replying itself in a jerky loop, wide and golden and real.

Steve. That was it. It had all been for Steve.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

He didn’t sleep after that.

Sometimes it was difficult to tell if he’d slept or not. Time ran together like blood and water, inseparable, sleeping collapsing into waking.

But he hadn’t slept after that. He was certain.

He tried to hide it. He splashed cold water on his face after he brushed his teeth, but the skin underneath his eyes was purple, and his eyes were bloodshot, and he couldn’t stop blinking just to stay awake.

He looked like death warmed over. Maybe he looked like this all the time – he probably did, he reasoned – but today he looked and felt especially bad. He couldn’t hide it, and that made him feel edgy, vulnerable.

He didn’t like not being able to hide.

He could tell, as soon as he walked stiffly into her office, that his doctor noticed. She took an extra moment to survey his face, but she didn’t frown, or comment.

Instead, she simply held her hands together over her desk, fingers serenely intertwined.

“James,” she said. She sounded as if she were pleasantly surprised to see him, as if these visits weren’t scheduled and rigidly mandated. “Of course it’s a little soon to tell, but – how did your new medication work out for you? Did it help you sleep?”

Bucky blinked slowly. He wondered, sometimes, what she did when he wasn’t here, when she wasn’t with a patient. Sometimes he thought she just sat around and laughed at him.

“It’s great,” he said hollowly. “Worked great.”

He hated that word. It was overused. No one really thought anything was ‘great’.

“Oh?” she questioned. “A dreamless sleep, then?”

Did she know? She must know, about the television. He thought she must know, too, about being caught by – he couldn’t remember his name, the orderly that was blond like Steve but not as patient or kind. But evidently he’d kept his promise of not telling, or else this session would’ve opened like the last, with stern warnings and threats related to his ‘privileges’.

Still – she must know.

“Yes,” he said. “Like death.”

Normally, she wouldn’t have let him get away with a comment like that. She would’ve read into it, poked and prodded into his assumed obsession with death for a good twenty minutes before rounding it off with predictable questions about suicidal ideation. But not today.

Today, she seemed to be in a rather chipper mood. Which was great, because he’d refused to close his eyes during a meditation exercise they’d had this morning for fear he’d pass out and fall over, and his instructor had grumpily made a note about his lack of cooperation in his file, and –

“Our last time together felt like it had a negative focus,” she was saying. “Would you agree with that?”

Last time. No assaulting staff members. No dreaming.

“Sure,” he answered. He wasn’t sure where she was going with this, and he was frankly too fucking tired to care.

“I thought we could try to make today more positive,” she said warmly. She pulled out something from beneath her hands – a piece of paper. But not from his file. It was small. A notecard.

He stared at it, not responding.

“We’re going to try a new exercise,” she said brightly. “On this card, I’ve written down a negative thought. And what I’d like you to do is give me three positive thoughts that counteract it.”

Great, Bucky thought. More bullshitting. But this, at least, was something he was good at.

“Okay,” he said blankly.

His doctor slid the card forward slowly, and he took it, lowering his eyes to read the words printed on it.

‘I WILL ALWAYS BE ALONE.’

He read them, then stared at them, then read them again. He felt his body go rigid underneath him, felt his mind go blank the way it often did before he lost his grip on it completely, felt himself stop breathing and then start again a moment too late.

“James?” his doctor asked, sweetly. “Whenever you’re ready. A positive thought that counteracts it.”

He watched as the card slipped from between his fingers, his numb fingers, and fluttered to the floor. His breath hitched again, and he wanted to cough, to force something out through his tightening throat, but he couldn’t.

Steve. He wanted to be with Steve, but –

“James?” her voice came again.

But they wouldn’t –

He forced himself to stand, swaying even as he did. 

“No,” he said. He felt the urge to vomit swell in him, pushed it down, swayed, righted himself. “No, I can’t –“

“James, please sit down.”

“I can’t,” he gasped. He could fall to his knees right then and empty what was left of his breakfast, right here, right on her office floor, but that would mean staying and he needed to leave. “I can’t.”

He felt himself stumble to the door, heard the sharp clip of her high heels as she stood herself and made to follow him. He ignored it, opening the door and stepping into the overwhelming relief of the hallway, staggering out into the seemingly vast space.

The other orderly was there, the not Steve. His eyes widened as he watched Bucky exit, stepping forward.

He just needed to make it to the bathroom. He stumbled forward, forcing himself to keep going, not looking at the orderly, just moving, step after step as his stomach turned and bile burned already at the back of his throat.

“Should I - ?” he heard the orderly question, his voice farther and farther away.

“Let him go,” his doctor said.

And then he was in the bathroom, sinking onto his knees on the icy tile, and if he got vomit in his hair what did it really matter? And Steve wasn’t there because he worked the night shift, and right now he was –

Bucky didn’t know where he was. He was wherever they kept him, wherever they kept all of them when they weren’t here, he guessed, active and on display –

But then a fresh wave of nausea hit him, and he heaved over the toilet, too sick to think.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Later, he hesitated at the door to the bathroom, a little afraid to leave. He was almost certain there’d be someone just outside, waiting, ready to drag him by the arm back to his doctor’s office where he would finally learn his lesson and have all of his ‘privileges’ stripped from him.

When he finally worked up the nerve to dart over the threshold, though, there was no one. A few orderlies were walking past, but they paid him no attention.

He wasn’t sure what to do with himself at that point, having broken from the day’s routine. He’d never left in the middle of a session.

After thinking it over for a moment, he crept back to his room, refusing to make eye contact with anyone as he walked past. Before he knew it, he was back at his door.

He slipped inside, still feeling edgy. It was all wrong – he never went back to his room midday. He felt defiant, free - and it was terrifying.

He shut the door behind him, then froze when he saw it. Something else that was wrong, and out of place.

A book, placed carefully on the neatly tucked blanket covering his bed.

He walked over, picking it up. It was thin and light, worn with age. A paperback copy of Hamlet.

He knew who had left the book, but it seemed like a strange choice. He searched his mind, thumbing back through his sparse cache of memories, trying to recall a connection between Steve and Shakespeare.

There was none. He could recall reading, but not Shakespeare – it was usually science fiction, things like that. And Steve, in his memories, was always with his sketchbook.

He turned the book over in his hands, opened it from the back. There was no empty pocket for a card, no markings that indicated it had ever been part of a library.

Because no one was there to see him, he raised the edge of the book to his nose, hoping, absurdly, that it might smell like Steve, or even just what he imagined Steve would smell like. But it didn’t – there was just the heady smell of old paper, the chemical harshness of the ink.

He sat down, turning the book over and over. Wondering.

Finally, when no one came to fetch him, he let himself relax, stretch out on the bed. He opened the cover, letting his fingers drift over the print before he began.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Hours later – it had to be hours, he’d read and read until the words had slurred together and he’d finally let his eyes drift shut – he woke with a startle. The book was still spayed on his chest, keeping the page.

It was a knock on the door. But it was hesitant, soft, and Bucky waited an extra few seconds, blinking away the sleep, before getting up, just to hear it again.

He opened the door, and seeing Steve standing there was as good as a dream. His hollowed-out chest flooded with relief, and he held back the sudden desire to burst forward, wrap his arms around him, bury his face into his throat and make him stay.

But Steve didn’t look as happy to see him, this time. His blue eyes were darker than usual, and he was frowning.

Bucky watched, a little perplexed, as Steve looked quickly up and down the quiet hallway.

“Can I come in?” he asked, his voice an urgent whisper.

That hadn’t even occurred to Bucky as a possibility. His eyes widened, and he hesitated, stepping back to make room for him in the doorway even before he fully decided.

“Sure,” he said, replying in the same low, secretive tone. He let Steve shift past him, breath catching a little at the closeness of his body, before he shut the door.

Then Steve was standing there a little awkwardly, half-glancing at the bed. Bucky’s room didn’t have chairs.

“Uhm,” he stammered, because it felt a little dangerous, sitting on the bed, even just sitting, but there was nothing else. “You can – you can sit down.”

“Thanks,” Steve replied. Bucky wasn’t sure, but as he followed, moving to sit down next to him, the apples of his cheeks looked a little pinker than usual.

He settled himself on the bed, making sure to put a comfortable amount of distance between their two bodies. His skin felt alive, tingling with anticipation, and his stomach felt a little sick again, but in a good way. He wondered, eager, what Steve wanted, what could be so important to him as to warrant this, this wanton flaunting of the rules.

“I’m sorry if I’m making you uncomfortable,” Steve said, as soon as Bucky’s eyes connected with his. “It’s just – I talked with Clint when we were switching out shifts, and he said you’d bailed on your therapy appointment. And that he found you wandering around last night, but he didn’t file a report.”

Bucky swallowed, unsure of how to respond to this. It sounded, vaguely, like an accusation, and immediately he felt a little ashamed. He didn’t know if he would call stumbling to the bathroom to vomit for twenty minutes ‘bailing,’ though.

“Are you okay?” Steve asked. He leaned a little further into their shared space, his frown deepening, eyebrows furrowed with concern. Bucky bit his lip, at a loss.

He looked away, looked at his hand, alone on his lap. He wasn’t okay. Of course he wasn’t okay. But he couldn’t see how saying it, how telling Steve, could make this better. Could make him worry less.

“I’m sorry,” the blond repeated, more urgently. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I respect your privacy. It’s just, I …”

His voice trailed off, and Bucky finally looked up again. He wanted so badly to lie. If only they’d made Steve his doctor instead of that horrible cunt. He’d have been singing like a canary in days.

But he didn’t want to lie. Back then, Steve had always been able to tell, when he’d tried. When he couldn’t find work. When rent was due and they had no food, and he knew who to steal from without getting caught. When they caught him, and his face was swollen like the oranges they couldn’t afford.

“You got the book,” Steve said, suddenly. Bucky followed his eyeline, to where the book was lying, dog-eared, on the nightstand.

“Yeah,” he said. His voice was rawer than he expected. “It was just sitting there, when I …”

He didn’t want to say, snuck back to my room in the middle of the day. But Steve seemed to know, anyway.

“I asked Clint to get it to you,” he said, his voice warming a little. “Did you have a chance to read any of it, yet?”

“Most of it,” he said immediately. That was a lie, but a little one. Really, he’d scoured all of it, every line, searching for the hidden reason Steve had given to him, the second meaning behind the words. Read and read until sleep had pounced on him like a starving cat. 

“What do you think, so far?” Steve asked, gently. Bucky liked the way he asked questions. As if any answer would be right.

He found himself looking down again, rubbing his fingers absently along the top of his thigh.

“Why did Ophelia kill herself?” he asked. He hadn’t realized he had even been holding in the question – it spilled out of him, sudden, like the memories, when they seized him. “Was it because she couldn’t have him?”

Steve’s mouth fell open a little at that, the surprise plain in his light eyes. Bucky pursed his lips in regret, although he did want to know. He had so many questions, so much to ask that he couldn’t. But he could ask about this, these fake characters. He could reach through them.

“Do you think she really meant to die?” he replied, finally. “It’s debatable. The queen described it as an accident, that when the branch snapped and she fell, she was too out of her mind to fight it. She never panicked. She was even singing, right until the end.”

There was something wonderfully soothing, beautiful, about that image. He had seen death, and it was never like that. No pastel flowers, no sinking down into warm water. No sweet songs. 

“I don’t know,” he said, the envy evident in his voice. “If you had to choose a way to die, that sounds like a pretty nice way to go.”

Steve stared at him, then, his eyes wavering, his lower lip quivering until he bit it still. It was intense, too intense, but Bucky didn’t want to look away. He held their eyes together as long as he could stand it, his breath picking up pace.

“You don’t think about hurting yourself, do you?” the other man asked. Except it wasn’t a question, it was a plea. 

Another chance to lie. Again, he lowered his head, ashamed, afraid to answer with the real truth.

“Bucky,” Steve said, when he didn’t answer, and his voice sounded so welcoming when he said his name, like something he could fall into, like water in which he could willingly drown. “I don’t want you to think like that.”

Bucky didn’t realize he’d let his eyes drift shut. He startled, jumping a little when he felt fingertips brush against the top of his hand.

Steve pulled his hand back immediately.

“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly. “I shouldn’t –“

“No,” Bucky said. He swallowed, pushing his hand a little higher up his thigh. Turning it over, so it was palm up. Offering it, hesitantly.

He breathed out, slow and even, when Steve took it. Immediately, the tension in his chest settled, released in time with the rhythm of Steve squeezing his fingers, rubbing his thumb gently over his knuckles. Only his heart seemed to pick up speed.

He spared a look at their hands, resting softly just above his knee. He tried to remember a time, from before, when they’d held hands like that, but nothing came.

But then – when things changed between them, before, it had been too late for holding hands. They’d been living in each other’s pockets for years, sleeping wrapped in each other’s arms and kept apart by only the thinnest of excuses, and when the dam broke, their hands were too restless to be this still.

“I’m here,” Steve said, with another little squeeze. “I don’t know what’s happening, but I want you to know. I’m here.”

He was. That was the horror and the miracle of it, the fact that got to the very core of Bucky’s selfishness. That he was in hell, he was drowning, and his only comfort was that he wasn’t alone. That he could take Steve with him.

He squeezed back, resisting the urge to tighten his grip. Struggling not to break the moment, and just let it be. Lose himself in it, while he still could.


	4. Pizza Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter introduces a character with an eating disorder. If this is a trigger for you, please be wary, especially because Bucky's point of view doesn't allow for it to be depicted with much empathy or sympathy, and as a result the description is somewhat callous and stark.

Bucky hesitated on the outskirts of the dayroom. He took a moment to glance at the plastic chair near the window, the one he used so often he was beginning to think of it as his own. His routine of sitting there, staring out at a world he couldn’t reach, had become so automatic it was strange to consider doing anything else.

But this morning was different. This morning, he had a purpose.

It was something they talked about all the time here, in a thousand different ways. How to find a purpose again. The advice was usually to start small. Come up with a daily goal. Usually, this was something pathetically small, something like, brush your teeth! But it was supposed to be good, if you could keep even meaningless promises. Even just to yourself.

Now he had a goal. A small goal. Manageable, they would say. That was the word they used.

He wondered if his doctor would find out somehow. Maybe he could use it as fodder to start getting himself out of the hole he’d dug by running out on their last session.

He started walking toward Clint, who was leaning against a wall, looking like he’d rather be doing anything else than watch them all do nothing. He couldn’t blame him, really.

Steve wasn’t there. He worked the night shift. If he was, Bucky would’ve been in his plastic chair, waiting. 

He didn’t particularly like Clint, who usually looked either flighty or sour-faced and who Bucky was pretty sure didn’t like him, either. But he seemed to have earned, somehow, the badge of honor that was Steve’s friendship. Begrudgingly, Bucky had to respect that.

Now he was standing in front of him, holding his book, and Clint raised his eyebrows at him.

But then there was a sudden bang, and both their eyes shot to the left.

It was the double doors, the doors that led – Bucky didn’t know where they led. Out. He had never seen them open.

An orderly stepped through, escorting a girl.

She must’ve been pretty, once. Now she was thin, dangerously thin, what he could see of her body all sharp angles hidden beneath oversize clothes. Her skin was white, like wet paper stretched over her bones.

She had thin red hair that brushed her shoulders. Bucky’s eyes widened at that, and he tried to get a better look at her face, because – but he couldn’t know her.

Maybe he didn’t recognize her. Maybe she was just the kind of girl to stand out.

Because, despite a body that looked ready to collapse into dust, her eyes were bright and knowing and defiant. She kept her chin up, looking over the room in poorly hidden distaste, as if she knew she didn’t belong there.

But then, that was what they all thought, at least at first. Maybe she wasn’t so different.

He watched the pair as they marched past them, walking through the dayroom and disappearing down the hall that led to the patients’ rooms.

When he turned back, he noticed that Clint was staring, too.

He waited patiently until he finally startled, realizing that Bucky’s eyes were on him.

“Shit,” he said, running a hand back absently through his hair, which was already messy and always looked dirty. “You’re still here.”

“I want to go to the library,” he said.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Clint didn’t seem put out by his request. In fact, he seemed a little grateful to be free from the monotony of the dayroom, walking eagerly, as if savoring the chance to stretch his legs.

“Got any big plans for tonight?” Bucky asked.

Clint slowed his walk, eyes widening a little at him.

“It’s Saturday,” Bucky said, by way of explanation. Silently, he congratulated himself. Since Steve, he had been working hard to keep track of which day it was.

“Oh, right,” Clint said, although he still seemed weirded out by the question. “Ehh. Nothing big. Maybe go to a bar. Get shitfaced.”

Bucky nodded, because he hadn’t really cared about the answer. Clint seemed to, though, and he frowned a moment later.

“Sorry,” he offered. Bucky knew what he meant – sorry that he couldn’t go to a bar and get shitfaced, too. It wasn’t exactly at the top of his list of things to feel sorry about.

Although – he wished he could get some whiskey. Just a taste – he thought it might bring something back. He could remember the burn of it in his throat, the perfume of the girl in his arms as he spun her around, her bright smile as he looked past her, searching for another face in the crowd.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Saturday is pizza day, so.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Clint was laughing. He even slapped his hand against his leg when he was finished.

“You’re weird,” he said, still gasping a little for breath. “But I think I get why Steve likes you.”

Then they were at the door, and Clint threw out his hands, as if welcoming him.

“Ta da! The library,” he said, stepping back to make room for Bucky to move in front of him. “Go crazy. Just make sure you show up to your, um, craft thingy. At eleven.”

“You aren’t going to supervise me?” Bucky asked, surprised. They hardly ever left them alone, especially in rooms that had things in them. Things you could throw, things you could destroy. Even books had weight to them.

“It’s a library,” Clint said, the sarcasm thick in his voice. Clearly he had never considered, unlike Bucky, how effective a ground zero the library would be, if one wanted to burn the whole place down. All that paper. “You’re not a fucking kid.”

Bucky smiled a little. Maybe he had misjudged Clint, after all.

“I’ll be at my craft thingy,” he promised.

He stepped inside the library, letting the heavy door click shut behind him on its own. Instantly, he knew he would be at home there.

The air was thick, heavy with the musty smell of old paper. The light was dim, but natural, and as soon as he noticed he rushed to the back of the room where there was a line of windows, shrouded by blinds. He peeked through them, frowning at the bars, and the non-distinct huddle of trees he could see outside.

But he almost didn’t mind that, another dead end, because he was alone, and he could breathe, and he could hide between the shelves and feel closed in, but in a good way, a safe way. And if anyone came for him, he could push a shelf over, and it would push the other shelves over, and crush them.

Steve had been right. He needed to come here more often.

But for today, he had just one goal. It was easy enough, finding a dictionary, and he tugged it forward from between the other reference books carefully. It was big, bigger than almost any book he’d ever held, even the Bible. And he realized, holding it, feeling its weight heavy on his palm, that he hadn’t done this since he was a child.

He cracked it open, skipped through large hunks of thin pages until he was close. Then he found it, ran the tip of his finger softly underneath the word.

or·i·son /ˈôrisən,-zən,ˈär-/ noun, archaic, plural noun: orisons. 1. a prayer.

He smiled, slamming the book shut.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

The too skinny girl was in the lunchroom. He watched her, carefully, as he dissected his own food.

He used to lust after pizza. He remembered that, even though it wasn’t nearly as strong as some of his other old memories. Still, it was there. He could almost feel it, the restlessness in his hand, the one he didn’t have anymore, thumbing the worn bills in his pocket, wondering, just this once? But you could make three, four meals for the price of a slice of a pizza, and he never gave into temptation.

This pizza was not that pizza, with bubbling cheese made by real Italian hands. This was thick cardboard with rubber and tomato paste on top. He didn’t want it – he almost never wanted food, craved it, anymore – but he’d learned that it was better just to shove it down. Starving yourself only got you more attention.

He wondered if that was what the skinny girl wanted – attention. He watched as she sorted through her plate, eating this but not that. The applesauce, but not the salad. The pudding cup, but not the crust. He narrowed his eyes as she picked the cheese off her pizza before ducking it into her mouth in a soppy little puddle dangling from her fork.

Then it hit him. She wasn’t sorting for calories. She was eating the things that were easy to throw up.

He didn’t know how eating disorders worked, really, but that seemed about par for the course. He stuck a corner of his own crust in his mouth, biting down hard.

Clint was watching her too. He’d never paid much attention to Clint, before, but now he was hard to unsee. He liked to think of him as Steve’s minion, though of course Steve didn’t have minions. He had friends, and enemies, and Clint was a friend. A useful friend, willing to bend the rules for him.

Clint was stuffing a piece of pizza into his mouth, too, even though he wasn’t supposed to. They weren’t supposed to eat the food, they were supposed to be – but no one really cared, and there was always mountains of leftover pizza.

Clint watched the girl, and he watched Clint. Something seemed strange about it, that intense focus in the other man’s eyes as he studied her bizarre eating habits, eyes widening a little every time she brushed back her thin curtain of hair. But Bucky couldn’t place it.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

When the knock came on his door, he wasn’t lying in the dark. He was stretched out on his bed, waiting, the small reading light brightening the room in harsh yellow and orange. Every few minutes he would reach for his book, try to read, but it never lasted long. He was restless.

Steve, Steve, Steve – he didn’t know what time it was, but it had to be soon. He loved the feeling he got when he thought about him, like a warmth that wrapped around him and made it hard to think about anything else. He could fall into it, if he wanted. Lose himself in it, the way he did sometimes, with the book.

He was ready when the knock came, and he slipped off his bed eagerly, opening the door.

Steve looked surprised, for a moment, his eyes widening.

“You’re smiling,” the blond said, and Bucky let it falter, for a moment, although he couldn’t kill it entirely. Was it okay, to smile? Was it too telling?

But then Steve was smiling too, almost grinning, and that made it worth it.

He watched as the other man looked quickly up and down the hallway, and his heart swelled a little at the confirmation. Steve wanted to come inside.

He stepped back wordlessly, making room for him to pass through as he stepped over the threshold. Again, his breathing picked up a little as Steve’s body slipped close for a second, closer than would ever be permissible.

He remembered this feeling, this jittery feeling, hypersensitive, like he was on tip-toes, overanxious and longing at the same time. He blinked, trying to recall the moment, the setting, but all he got was the feeling, and a flash of Steve, drying off his wet hair after a shower –

“How’s Hamlet?” Steve asked. The real one, the taller one, that was here now.

He was examining the little book, picking it up in his hands before he sat down with it on the bed. Bucky joined him, careful again not to sit too close, to give him enough space.

“Well, he’s dead,” Bucky said, frowning a little. He hadn’t liked the ending.

Steve looked a little startled at that answer, but it quickly faded into a small, amused smile.

“So you finished, then?” he asked, and Bucky nodded. “Do you want another one? Something different? A comedy, maybe? Or a novel?”

Bucky frowned, considering. He looked over at the book, clutched in Steve’s big hands.

“I read it all, but,” he said, choosing his words carefully, because he wasn’t sure if Steve would be able to understand. “I don’t think I’m finished with it yet.”

Steve did look a bit confused at that, his eyebrows coming together a little as he frowned. 

“All right,” he said, after a moment. He looked like he wanted to say more, but he didn’t comment, and Bucky was relieved. Even he wasn’t sure why he couldn’t let the story go just yet.

“Actually,” he said, reaching over to take the small book out of Steve’s hand. “I think I figured something out. Can I show you?”

“Of course,” Steve answered. He leaned toward him as Bucky opened the book and began thumbing through the pages, looking for the right one. Time seemed to slow with the other man lingering so close to him, and it felt like minutes went by before he stumbled on the line.

“Here,” he said, softly, not daring to look up, because Steve’s face was right there. “This line – Hamlet says it – I’ll read it to you.”

He lifted his eyes, and Steve nodded gently.

“Okay,” Bucky began. “He sees Ophelia and he says, ‘Nymph, in thy orisons, be all my sins remember’d’”.

He lowered the page, returning his attention to Steve’s eyes.

“I went to the library,” he said, slowly. “I looked up that word, ‘orison’. It means a prayer.”

“You went to the library?” Steve repeated. His smile stretched, and Bucky nodded a little, flushing, not sure how that could be more important than what he was trying to explain.

“Yeah,” he said. “And I looked up the word, and I understand, now.”

“Understand what?” Steve prodded. But gently. All of his questions were so forgiving, even before he knew the answer.

“He fucked her,” Bucky said.

Instantly, Steve’s smile dropped, and his mouth fell open. The sudden change in expression startled him, and he played back his words, and it hit him. There were kinder ways to say it, more distant ways, and he struggled to remember, to sort the outdated from the new. They went together. They made time. They made love. They –

“I mean,” he said, quickly, but carefully, “They slept together.”

Steve still looked astonished. Bucky watched as he pulled the book back toward him, reading the words again silently. 

“How do you get that?” he finally asked. Even his voice was startled, shaky. “He’s asking her to pray for him.”

“No,” Bucky said, and the firmness of his voice, the defiance in it, surprised even him. “He’s asking her to remember his sins in her prayers. But how can she know his sins, unless they sinned together?”

He watched as Steve opened his mouth, hesitated, closed it again.

“Does it matter?” he asked. And there was something in his voice, something else – a plea. A plea to agree with him, to let it go.

“It does matter,” Bucky said, and there was a plea in his voice too, a more desperate one. “It does because – it happened and he – he pretends none of it did and he sends her away and – why? Why did he do that? Why was he so cruel to her?”

He didn’t realize there were tears running down his cheeks until he registered the change in Steve’s expression, shifting from confusion to apprehension, to fear.

“Bucky,” he said. His voice was suddenly very firm, and forced. “Maybe – I shouldn’t have given you Hamlet. It wasn’t a good choice. Here, give it to me and tomorrow I’ll bring –“

“No,” he heard himself say. He clutched the book tightly, even though Steve could’ve easily wrestled it from him, with his two strong hands. “I read it. It’s too late.”

Steve had lifted his hands, but he dropped them now, defeated. Bucky realized his shoulders were shaking.

“It happened,” he repeated, holding the book hard, his thumb creasing the cover. “I know it did.”


	5. Gimme Some Sugar

He sat stiffly on the bed, waiting, the book still in his hand. He blinked at the tears that stung on the edge of his vision, willing them away. Although he couldn’t fully explain why, he had a sudden, sinking feeling that he’d gone too far.

He wanted to be Steve’s friend. And that meant not being frightening. He’d gotten better at that. But it also meant not being crazy, and yet here he was, completely obsessed with a book that Steve had probably given him just to pass the time, crying over people and tragedies that didn’t exist, that weren’t fucking real –

“Hey,” Steve said softly. He flinched, not wanting to look at him. He wanted to explain, and he couldn’t.

But then Steve’s hand was on his shoulder again, tentatively, giving him a few long seconds to shrug it away before it settled its full weight on his body.

“It’s all right,” Steve said, so emphatically that, for a brief moment, Bucky almost believed him. “Maybe it did happen. That’s the beauty of reading a book, or a play; you can interpret it however you like. It can mean what you need it to mean.”

Bucky lowered his head, considering this. He knew it was meant to be comforting, but something about it didn’t sit well with him. He didn’t want it to be open to interpretation, to have endless right answers. He wanted the truth.

“Why do you think he sent her away?” he asked, finally. Because, he decided, whatever Steve said, he could accept it as being real.

He watched out of the corner of his eye as Steve frowned, considering.

“He was angry,” the blond answered, carefully. “Because she betrayed him.”

Bucky held his breath in a little at that. He couldn’t help but think of the countless ways he’d betrayed Steve, long before they’d met decades later and Steve had known his old name. He’d betrayed Steve with every bullet, every innocent, every mission accomplished in their name.

“She was just following orders,” he whispered. He didn’t have as much sympathy for Ophelia, in that respect. He didn’t know what they did to women, back then, who didn’t obey – but he thought it couldn’t be comparable to what they would do.

“Right,” Steve said, nodding his head a little. “She had to do what her father asked. And I think Hamlet knew that, understood it, but he was overwhelmed. His whole world had betrayed him, and then, when she lied, too; it was just too much, in that moment.”

“Maybe she deserved it, then,” he mused. Surely there was a way she could’ve fought harder. Learned to disobey, without being killed.

“No,” Steve said, immediately, firmly. “She didn’t have a choice. Hamlet was angry, not just at her but at everything in his life, and so he lashed out. I think, on some level, he thought he had more time. I think he thought he’d get another chance. That’s what we all think, right?”

Bucky nodded. He thought he’d have more time with Steve, more chances after the war, but then he’d fallen and – 

“That’s what makes it a tragedy,” Steve finished. “They loved each other, but they were pulled apart by circumstance.”

Bucky felt himself continuing to nod, his lips pursing together.

“It wasn’t fair,” he said, softly. He realized he was talking to himself, but Steve answered immediately.

“It wasn’t,” he agreed. He brushed his thumb a little more firmly against the muscle of Bucky’s shoulder. He’d almost forgotten the hand was there.

He looked down at the thin book, wondering if Steve had really picked it out for him. Steve, or someone else.

“I wish I could change the ending,” he said. Again, the words were more for himself, but it still meant something, that Steve was there, listening, watching him so intently, as if what he said made a difference. “I wish I could give them more time.”

Steve didn’t answer, this time. Instead, he kept moving his thumb, the touch so soft that Bucky could barely feel it, except that when he did, it was like a livewire over his skin, making it vibrate with warmth and sensation.

“Do you think you deserve a happy ending?” he asked.

The muscles of his back stiffened, and he couldn’t look at Steve.

“Don’t ask things like that,” he said, spitting the words out hatefully. He forgot, sometimes. He spent so much time wanting Steve, wishing he could have him, that he forgot why he couldn’t. Why he shouldn’t. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

And he thought of blood in the snow, and the weight of a knife in his hand, and crying in a language he wished he couldn’t understand –

“I don’t know you,” Steve agreed. But still he was touching him, gently, constantly, and even the disgust surging up in his stomach couldn’t make Bucky move away.

“I don’t, but,” Steve went on. He was looking at Bucky, searching him, searching his face, and he wished it could be enough. He wished he could turn, and their eyes would meet, and the memories would rush back like sunlight into a room and it would all be over.

“When I look at you, I just – I want good things to happen to you. I want you to be safe.”

Safe, Bucky thought. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt safe. Even before, before the war – even then there had been threats, things that could kill him. Pneumonia that could seep into his lungs and take him away. Losing him – that would kill him.

And then, if they ever found out, being beaten to death in an alley – because who would be there, then, the next time he got sick?

“I wish you could write my ending,” he said, suddenly. He knew it wasn’t something he should say – it fell under the category of frightening Steve, frightening him away, and he didn’t want that. But he couldn’t help it.

He was right. Steve look taken back for a second, his eyes widening.

But then they softened again, and he still didn’t pull away his hand.

“You know I can’t,” he said. But regretfully, Bucky thought. Or maybe he was just being hopeful. “You have to do that.”

He nodded, kept nodding. That was one of the most awful things he’d learned, about life. That other people couldn’t save you.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. At first, Bucky thought it was for what he’d just said, but then he shifted, started to get up. “I have to go. If they notice I came in here –“

Bucky just nodded again, looking up, his eyes following him as he stood. Steve handed him the little cup – the whole reason they were together – and watched as he threw it into his mouth and swallowed, and showed his tongue.

He turned around, smiled a little, at the doorway.

“Night, Buck,” he said. The light from the hallway was bright, too bright, flooding his face in painful rays of white. And then he was gone.

Later, he laid down in the darkness, wondering. How would he know to call him –

And then memories moved in, overtaking him, the way they often did, just before he fell asleep. Lingering so closely together that it was hard to tell if they were memories, or dreams, or both.

‘Night, Buck.’ The voice, too weak, followed by a little shudder that he felt through his chest, then a heavy, wet cough. He pulled his arms a little tighter around him, tucked his face into the back of his shoulder, keeping him warm, the familiar lie he’d tell himself all winter. Just to keep him warm –

And then he’d say,

‘Night, Stevie.’

But maybe he’d heard him wrong. It was easy, he had to remind himself, too easy to see things that weren’t there. Hear things. The things he wanted too much.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

When he woke the next morning, slowly coming back into his body, he didn’t open his eyes for a long time. It was almost possible to imagine that if he didn’t move, if he didn’t acknowledge his consciousness, he wouldn’t have to leave his bed.

Because today was Sunday. 

In the real world, it was supposed to be a day of rest, a day when you spent time with God, worshipped him. But in here, it was one of the days Steve would be absent.

He lay still, waiting, hoping maybe it was still the middle of the night. But too soon, he heard the brisk knock on his door, the click and slide as it was pushed open.

“Rise and shine,” came the voice, loud and sarcastic but also oddly cheerful. Clint. He could recognize his voice, now.

He listened for the door to click shut again, then sighed, slowly dragging his feet down to the floor. It was just another day. He could make it through. All he had to do was follow the rules. Eat, shower, eat again. Appear to be engaged. Refuse to lash out. Curb the violence. Easy.

Sometimes, if he tried not to think, if he just let his mind go blank and slip away, time seemed to go by faster. That was the strategy he used that morning, until he found himself sitting at breakfast, gnawing on a slice of melon as he watched the girl.

She was adding sugar to her oatmeal. He watched, chewing, as she ripped open a packet of sugar, dumping it in the center. Then another. And another.

He started to keep a count. Three. Six. Eight. Nine.

His hand started to shake a little as she continued. It irritated him. You weren’t supposed to use all the sugar packets at once. It was – he breathed out slow, trying to be calm, but he couldn’t. She was drawing attention to herself. It was a rebellion, a small rebellion, yes, but a rebellion, and all he really wanted was just to coast through this day. To not think. To not be tempted to do things, things like recklessly tear apart every single sugar packet.

He was up to thirteen when he finally stood, walking stiffly, but quickly, over to Clint.

“Aren’t you going to do something?” he demanded, nodding his head in the girl’s general direction.

The other man raised his eyebrows at him, frowning quizzically.

“What?” he said, shrugging his shoulders even as he leaned against the wall. “She’s eating. That’s probably a good thing for her. If anything, she should be getting a gold star.”

“She’s using all the sugar,” he said, resisting the urge to outright point at her accusingly. And it was true, he realized, catching sight of her for a moment as he turned back. She had used every packet of sugar. All that remained was a little stack of shredded paper next to her bowl.

The real sugar, anyway. She’d left the packets of fake stuff.

“Are you worried you’re not gonna get enough sugar?” Clint asked. His voice was dry, clearly not amused. “Because I can get you more sugar, man, if you’re gonna freak out about it.”

“I’m not freaking out,” Bucky muttered. He stiffened his shoulders. Maybe he’d made a mistake. He’d hated her for standing out, and now he was making an even bigger show of himself.

“You kinda are,” Clint replied, his frown deepening. “Just chill. It’s fuckin’ sugar.”

Bucky lowered his head, fighting the urge to protest. It wasn’t just sugar. It was – deviation. Deviating from the expected. He hadn’t realized, until now, how heavily he’d invested in the methodical web of lies around him. It wasn’t real, of course, but it was predictable, and that made it possible to not go completely insane.

The girl was threatening that, he realized.

But none of this was anything he could explain to Clint.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. 

Then he turned around, making his way back toward his table. As he pulled out the plastic chair with a long screech, he caught the girl’s eye, watching him. She looked away quickly, so quickly he wasn’t sure if she’d even really been looking.

Now she was stirring her oatmeal, blowing on it with her lips, the only part of her body still filled in. He glowered at her, wondering why. Was she trying to binge, sugar packets being the only option left? Or was she contrite, trying to fight her illness the way they’d instructed, trying to bring her body back as quickly as she could?

She didn’t look contrite. As she ate her oatmeal, raising one spoonful to her lips after another, she looked defiant. Strong, despite her stick-thin arms. She held her chin high, her shoulders back.

Maybe it was a rebellion, Bucky thought.

But then he went back to picking at his own breakfast, because he didn’t want to think about the girl, about why she was here, if she was suffering or better. He just wanted to get through the day.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

The unfortunate reality about not thinking about the girl was that she was inescapable. Whereas the orderlies came and went on their own schedule, she was a patient, and her day mirrored his. She was like a shadow, only a few steps behind.

She was in the art class, and he found himself watching her again as she painted. Unlike most of the patients, who stared zombie-like at their canvas, painting because they had been told to paint, she looked absorbed in her work. Reflective, thoughtful, her lips in a thin, serious line.

Even though he knew he shouldn’t, knew that nothing good could come of breaking his routine, he found himself drifting toward her as the class ended. She didn’t turn as he approached, her delicate hands still touching up little details with her brush.

He stared. And then, when he saw the painting up close, he stared some more.

His mouth fell open, and he stared until she finally turned around, looking up at him with eyes that were still alert, even sunken as they were into purple-grey sockets.

“I’ve been there,” he said before he could stop himself. There was real awe in his voice, and he swallowed, still staring into the painting.

It was a cityscape, the brushstrokes loose. The buildings were grey and black, mingling into a red and orange haze, but still, the skyline was recognizable. He couldn’t tell if she had painted the city at dawn, or on fire.

“Moscow?” she questioned. And something in her eyes shifted, as she waited for his answer. They widened, searching for something in his face.

“No,” he said, but even as he said it, he wasn’t sure it was true. He fell back into his memories, searching – and as he held the image of the city in his mind, he recalled little details. The stiffness of the kevlar over his chest, the drop of wet as a snowflake kissed his cheek and then melted away, his finger hesitating on a trigger –

He jerked his eyes from the painting, stumbling in his rush to get away, nearly backing into another patient’s easel. He took in a rush of breath, his chest shuddering as he fought to catch it, to even it out, to breathe normally again.

The girl watched him, lowering her paintbrush slowly.

“No,” he said again, more firmly this time. And then he turned, rushing out of the room.

He was lucky. The class had already ended. He was running away again, but this time, he wasn’t too early. He hadn’t broken any of the rules.

He found himself in the bathroom, running the water in one of the porcelain sinks. Sometimes the water helped. Everything about the water – the gentle rushing sound, the cold that shocked him back into the moment. The cool glide of it down his throat, bringing him back into his body.

Now he dipped his hand into the stream, cupping as much of it as he could and splashing it onto his face.

It meant nothing. She had been to Moscow. So many people had been abroad, had probably been, to Moscow.

And yet it took a long time before his shoulders finally stopped shaking, as he stood hunched over the basin. A long time, before he could raise his eyes, trying to avoid catching sight of his reflection in the mirror, and straighten up. A long time before he could go back to getting through the day.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Hours later, he was picking at his salad, wondering how much of it he could get away with not eating. He was nudging his guess – a little less than half – toward one side of the plate when he heard the sharp slam of plastic against plastic.

He glanced up, eyes wide. It was the red-haired girl, dropping her cafeteria tray down across from him.

He stabbed a piece of lettuce as she sat down, trying not to look at her as his mind edged instantly toward panic. No one had ever tried to eat with him. Few people had even spoken to him. What could she possibly want? All this, because he’d recognized the city in her painting?

He knew he shouldn’t have said anything, he thought, swallowing hard before he forced himself to look up. She was already watching him.

“Do you know him?” she demanded. She hadn’t looked particularly happy before, but now her look was smoldering, and he felt himself instinctively cringe underneath it. 

“Know who?” he snapped back, trying his best to make his voice hard and dark. To intimidate her. It was usually not something he had a problem accomplishing.

And yet, there was still an edge of panic present in it, because – did she mean Steve? How could she know that he knew him? Knew the truth about him? Unless she herself knew –

“Clint,” she said icily. “You were talking to him at breakfast.”

He relaxed immediately, subtly letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding in. It was strange, that she already knew the orderlies’ names. But that wasn’t for him to worry about.

“Do you know him?” he asked, stabbing another piece of lettuce with excessive force. “He stares at you.”

“That isn’t an answer,” she said back coolly. He watched as she set down her own fork carefully, resting her hands together on her tray.

Suddenly, she reminded him of his doctor, all cold composure, drawing out answers to questions she had no business asking in the first place. He scowled, already feeling his shoulders tense.

“Not really,” he said. He could say more, say how Clint had left him alone in the library, had let him go when he’d found him in the dayroom at night, how he wasn’t as kind to him as Steve was but he was still better at it than most people. But he wasn’t going to explain, because Clint connected back to Steve, and he wasn’t going to tell her a goddamn thing about Steve. 

“Ask him about Budapest,” she said. 

His eyes widened, but she reminded the picture of calm, even her breathing low and level. 

“Excuse me?” he snapped. She had a lot of nerve, demanding things from him. He didn’t even know her name.

“Ask him,” she repeated, slowly, “About Budapest.”

His mouth fell open a little despite himself, and he fought the urge to let his lips curve up into a smile, a laugh. Budapest.

Maybe he was wrong, assuming she was just here for her eating disorder. Maybe she really was crazy.

“Why should I?” he asked tersely, returning again to his dark voice, trying to pack as much menace into it as possible. “I don’t know you.”

That seemed to rile the girl a little, finally. Her shoulders stiffened, pulling her body back from the table.

“No?” she questioned, after a long moment of silence had passed between them. Then she narrowed her eyes, searching him, the way she had when he named the city in her painting. Looking for more.

His skin crawled under her gaze, and he could feel himself getting more and more irritated.

“No,” he said, enunciating the word carefully. It was enough to deal with his doctor, his schedule, his memories. He didn’t need to be sucked into anyone else’s fucked up mind. “I don’t. So I don’t have any reason to do you a favor.”

“I see,” she said stiffly, and his lips curled down. He hated those words. She really was like the insane version of his doctor, making demands just like her, only hers had no logic behind them. Expecting secrets and favors without trust.

He stared back at her, seething, and his hard stare finally seemed to work. She sat back, chair screeching even beneath her frail weight, and stood.

He watched her go, blood hot. But once she was gone, far away and out of sight, he found he could relax a little, go back to mechanically eating. He willed himself not to be angry, not to be upset by this. She may have reminded him of his doctor, but that woman had one thing she didn’t. Power over him.

It was when he was finally calm again, forcing himself to swallow the last few bites of what he’d calculated he had to eat, that it came to him. An idea.

The girl wanted to use him. And that wasn’t acceptable.

But maybe he could make it work, if he could use her, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel a little uncertain about this story, but I'm not sure why. It's one of the most ambitious things I've ever tried in terms of plot so - I hope it's turning out well. I don't know.


	6. Gold Star

He remembered rituals. For a long time, he was sure they had been ingrained in him by HYDRA, because they felt just as automatic. Dropping to his knees, offering his metal arm for repair. Opening his mouth to accept the gag.

But they were older, he came to realize. They originated long before his time as a soldier, even before his time as a man, regardless of the fact that they made little sense. They came back to him gradually, in faded recollections of dropping his small knees to the floor, but landing on something soft - a thin pillow. Small clean hands with fingers intertwined, propped on the back of a bench. Lips whispering solemn poetry.

He would practice these rituals, alone in his room, fascinated by how effortless the gestures felt. A touch to his forehead, then his chest, then his right shoulder, then his left, then a bow of his head. Sometimes he let his eyes slide closed, which also felt right, and waited for more to come, but nothing did.

It was only when he had practiced many, many times that the word came to him, forming in the darkness immediately after he closed his eyes: amen.

The memory waited with him as he stood in line, a vague parallel, the slow shuffle forward oddly familiar, until he reached the end of it and there was Steve, his scrubs bleach white. It hadn’t been Steve at the end of the line, before, but he thought, maybe, the other man had also worn white –

“Hey, Bucky,” Steve said, and the gentle smile he received made him startle, forget about what had come before, made him see only what was happening now. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” he said, meeting his eyes a little hesitantly. It was always overwhelming, to be in Steve’s presence. Like ducking his head under warm water. Sometimes, like breathing it in. 

“Did you sleep well last night?” he asked. There was a higher pitch to his voice, a worry, and Bucky wondered if Steve thought about him, too, when he was gone. The idea made him dizzy, and he blinked several times, focusing on the question.

He’d dreamt, but not nightmares. Not exactly. He’d dreamt of the girl, only she was younger, and stronger, thighs and cheeks filled out, arms reaching over her head in a perfect oval. Silk shoes with square ends and dark rings of blood at the toes, only by the time he’d seen the stains, he was too empty to pity her.

“Better,” he said, knowing he couldn’t explain all that to Steve in the few seconds they had before it would be obvious he was lingering. While he still waited eagerly for these mornings, they were less satisfying, now that he had nights. He wished it could be night, wished there was a door he could shut behind them. Wished he could lock it and never have to open it again.

“Good,” Steve breathed. He sounded like he’d been holding it in. “I’m glad, I’m – real glad. You sure you aren’t ready for a new book?”

Bucky shook his head, letting his eyes drift to the girl, who was seated stiffly in a chair near the window, legs tight together, as if she were wearing a pencil skirt.

“No,” he said, and he saw that Steve’s eyes followed his gaze over to her. He watched the other man’s brow furrow, his lips falling open a little, but he would have to explain later. “I have something else now.”

Steve didn’t say anything. He closed his mouth again, swallowing. Bucky was sure, given more time, given a closed door, he would’ve asked – but there wasn’t time for that now.

“All right,” the blond said. He raised the little cup, lips a thin line. “Here, uh – your meds.”

The memory came back, suddenly, rushing through his mind like a cold breeze. Something about the way he raised the cup, paused with it frozen in mid-air.

He took it, tipping back the pills, and opened his mouth, showed his tongue. Something about that, too. 

“I’ll see you soon,” Steve said, lowering his blue eyes. Those were not the right words, not even close.

Amen, he wanted to whisper. Somehow, he knew that Steve was linked to these memories. He had been there, close by, through every ritual, every drop of his knees. His hands would come together, but his shoulder would brush against someone else. He’d liked the touch.

He wondered what would happen if he said the word. If Steve could explain to him what it meant.

“Okay,” he said, lowly. Because there wasn’t time.

After breaking from the line, he made his way to his plastic chair, sliding down into it and leaning his full weight into the back, spreading his knees apart. He glanced outside – a rainy day, the glass half-fogged behind the bars, beads of water running slowly down the smooth surface. 

It was something he couldn’t tell anyone, not even Steve. How deeply comforting he found the weather. Thunder, sunshine, wind – it didn’t matter, because it was real, something he knew they couldn’t fake. The only kind he couldn’t stomach was snow.

He glanced toward the girl, still sitting stiffly in her own seat, eyes unfocused and far-away. He could talk to her, but there wouldn’t be a point in that, not until he’d fulfilled his miss – done what she had asked.

He turned his eyes back to the window, lulled, a little, by the soft smack of rain against the glass.

Funny, how every second with Steve was like sand between his fingers, but with the girl he felt like he had all the time in the world.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

He decided not to wait. He couldn’t see a point in it.

He walked up to Clint at dinner, his tray braced between his side and the grip of his hand. The other man raised his eyebrows at him, again, and he resisted the urge not to bristle with irritation. In here, approaching anyone meant that you wanted something.

“Hey there,” the blond said, looking him over slowly. “You need another field trip to the library?”

“No,” he said, adjusting the weight of the tray. He almost never missed the arm, except for trivial situations like these. The chicken soup they’d given him sloshed dangerously at the sudden tilt. “Budapest.”

“Excuse me?” Clint asked, after a moment. His eyes widened a little further at him.

“Budapest,” he repeated. He finally found a balance with the tray, stiffening his shoulders as he met the other man’s eyes, waiting.

Clint blinked slowly, his expression taking on the kind of stunned awkwardness that Bucky now found familiar. He wanted to show it – wanted to react openly to the ridiculousness of it – but he was holding back, because calling Bucky out on his craziness was only sure to invite more of it.

“Is that … a question?” the other man asked, finally. Bucky swallowed hard, slowly exhaling his breath.

“You don’t know anything about Budapest?” he pressed. Deep inside, a part of him felt almost – guilty. No, not guilt, it was – pity. Pity, for the girl, because surely she’d been hoping for something else, something more. Just as he had, the first time he’d laid eyes on Steve.

“I mean,” Clint began, still clearly incredulous. “It’s uhh, a city, right? Over in Europe?”

“Yes,” Bucky hissed. He pursed his lips, impatient, now that he’d gotten his answer. “It is.”

“Okay,” Clint said, after a long, hesitant pause. He looked almost comically distressed, and Bucky really wanted to just sit down, eat the food, kill time until he could be alone again. “Look, I’m sorry, I obviously don’t know anything about – Budapest. Like I said, you could hit up the library if –“

“Thank you,” he said, turning away. He spilled a little of the chicken soup on his tray, and he cursed under his breath as he scanned the room, looking for the girl. Even though they all wore the same anonymous clothing, loose sweats and t-shirts in dull colors that only hinted at what people wore in everyday life, she stood out, her hair the brightest color in the room.

He sat down across from her, watching as she dumped sugar packet after sugar packet into her chicken soup, slowly stirring it with her spoon after each addition. Only the real stuff, all the fake sugar packets still stuffed into the little box.

She didn’t acknowledge him, so he sipped a few spoonfuls of his own broth before speaking.

“He doesn’t know shit,” he said, finally, picking out a pale hunk of meat, “About Budapest.”

Her eyes darted up for a moment, another sudden flash of color, but were back to her soup almost instantly. She ripped open another packet – all the way across, wasting no time with a torn corner that she could use like a spout – and dumped it in.

“You want to tell me why you’re so fucking obsessed with sugar?” he snapped, suddenly irritated. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. He’d done something for her, and she should be –

“It metabolizes quickly,” she said, stirring her soup a few times before snatching up another packet.

He stared across at her, not sure what to make of that. Then he pursed his lips, deciding the explanation, if he pushed for more, would only be bullshit perverted by her eating disorder.

“How about Budapest?” he asked tersely, instead. “You plan on telling me anything about that?”

He waited, and then, suddenly remembering that he should be eating, picked up a twin packet of saltine crackers. He crushed them inside the thin plastic, kneading them between his thumb and finger until they were dust.

“No,” she said, stirring slowly.

He ripped open the packet of cracker dust, not caring when only half of it managed to settle over the surface of his soup.

“Thank you,” she said, softly. She didn’t look up, but he watched as her hand stilled, the spoon stirring her soup coming to a stop. “What is it that you want from me?”

Finally. He sat back a little, shoulders relaxing. This was what he had been expecting, hoping for. A little bit of give and take.

“I’m going to sit with you,” he said, picking up his own spoon. “Talk to you. Just make it look like you don’t have a problem with it.”

She didn’t say anything, but this time, he gave her a moment. Ate a few more spoonfuls of soup in tense silence, generously waiting.

“Fair enough,” she said, reaching for the last packet of sugar.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

He paused, gripping the cool metal of the doorknob in his hand. He could never turn it right away; always had to take a moment to think, to prepare himself, to steel his shoulders and know that it would be over quickly, and was nothing in comparison to what he’d already lived through.

Today he only hesitated a moment. He had a plan, this time. A preemptive strike.

He opened the door, stepping inside and waiting for the heavy click that came as it closed behind him. His doctor looked up, lips tight, expression neutral.

“James,” she said. “Please. Have a seat.”

He walked to the couch, sat on the edge, lowered his head. A long strand of hair fell in front of his eyes, but he didn’t move.

“I’m sure this will come as no surprise to you,” she began, drumming her nails briefly against the polished wood of her desk. Dark nails, trimmed short, but always perfectly manicured. “I was very disappointed that you felt the need to cut our last session together shor –“

“I know,” he said, jerking his head up, forcing himself to interrupt her. “I know it disappointed you. I thought a lot about that. And I decided to do something. Take your advice.”

“Take my advice?” she repeated, drawing back. He had caught her off guard, he could tell. She stopped drumming her nails. “I didn’t give you any advice.”

“You wanted me to say something that argued I wouldn’t be alone,” he said quickly. He tried to keep up the momentum in his voice, afraid she would jump in and shut him down before he’d had a chance to get it out. “I took the next step. I did something about it.”

He watched as her jaw twitched, slacking just enough that her lips parted.

“What did you do?” she asked, her voice slow, and suspicious.

“I made a friend,” he said. His hand, resting on his knee, curled into a fist, fingers knotting into the fabric as he waited for her response.

She did seem stunned, and that was what he had hoped for. A disruption in the games they played together, her questions increasingly designed to nudge him closer and closer toward the edge. She wouldn’t know what to do if he actually got better.

“James,” she said, finally, letting out his name in a rush of breath. “This is such a significant step for you. I wish you had waited to talk with me before making such a – substantial decision.”

He felt himself recoil at the words. It never got any less insulting, the idea that what normal people could do thoughtlessly, easily, had earth-shattering repercussions when he managed to accomplish them. He remembered her endless, prattling praise when he decided to start eating again.

“But it’s good,” he said, struggling to meet her eyes again. He didn’t want to look like he doubted it. “It’s good for me. Isn’t it?”

She pursed her lips again, bringing her hands together over the desk.

“Who is it?” she questioned, tilting her head a little to the side before righting it again. As if she were struggling, herself, to look composed, to be her usual unfeeling and slickly professional self.

“That gi – woman,” he said, slowly, panic tightening his throat as he realized he didn’t actually know her name. “With red hair. She’s new, she – has weird eating habits.”

“Natalia,” his doctor supplied, and he nodded immediately, vigorously, as if he recognized the name. “She suffers with bulimia, among other – issues. She is a very troubled young woman, James.”

“Everyone in this fucking place is ‘troubled,’” he spat out, losing his grip for a moment. He’d expected her to be happy, reassured, in that false way of hers. Not to gang up on him this way, like he was taking up a person the way an addict took up a needle. “Who else is supposed to be my damn friend?”

His doctor sighed, quietly, almost as if she intended for him not to notice.

“I’m just concerned, James,” she said, wringing her hands absently. He watched the subtle flash of her nails in the artificial light, the lacquer obviously fresh. “Doesn’t it frighten you?”

She let the question settle over him, and he felt his arm spasm, which meant his muscles were already wound tight. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. She was supposed to give him a fucking gold star.

“It shouldn’t frighten me,” he said, slowly, because that seemed to be the right answer. Normal people weren’t afraid of other normal people. They welcomed friendship with open arms, counted the number of people who liked them and wore it as a badge of pride.

“Shouldn’t it?” his doctor questioned. She leaned forward a little, but didn’t smile. “We’re here, James, partly because of your belief in HYDRA. An organization that stole your life away. Robbed you of your autonomy. Drained whatever blind faith you had in the world and made you cold, numb and dangerous and sustained by hatred.”

“This has nothing to do with HYDRA,” he said, stiffly. He hated the saying the word. There was no way to dance around his supposed insanity, when she made him say it.

“No,” she agreed, her voice quiet. Careful. “But it does have to do with love, doesn’t it? Friendship and love go hand in hand.”

“HYDRA has nothing in common with –“ he started, choking off his own voice. He didn’t want to say it. For years and years he’d gone without saying it, thinking it, that word. And now that he thought about it again, it was like summoning a demon to gnaw at him from the inside, making him restless and ravenous and hollow.

“With love?” his doctor finished, supplying the word for him. “HYDRA represents a great deal to you, James. It’s a powerful and complex symbolic manifestation of what did, really, hurt you. It was too difficult for you to face that reality, so you created your own – something simpler. Easier to vilify, and blame.”

He tightened the fist on his knee, hand shaking. He could argue, he knew, but it would be useless. Point out the experiments, the surgeries, the punishments, the torture, how all of that was real, how all of it had happened, not in his mind but to his body – and she wouldn’t believe him.

“I’m going to ask you a question, James,” she said, when it was clear he had no intention of replying. “A very difficult question, and I want you to consider your answer very carefully.”

“Okay,” he said, gruffly, because there was no way around it. Silence only worked when she allowed it.

“Was it HYDRA, that led you to the day you fell?” she asked, eyes open, earnest. “Or was it love? Think about it, James.”

He didn’t want to think about it. He closed his eyes, tried to cast his mind in darkness, too, but of course it wasn’t as simple as that, not when his mind was fighting so hard to rebel against her words. The answer was easy, of course it was HYDRA, that was who they were chasing down, fighting, that was why there were on the train –

Only he –

“Think, James,” she repeated soothingly.

Only he wasn’t there to fight HYDRA. Not really, he wasn’t as good as he was, wasn’t good enough, wasn’t brave, wasn’t there to fight, to do the right thing – didn’t he really just want to go back home? Back to Brooklyn? But he couldn’t go home. He couldn’t go alone.

And it came to him, the memory, painfully clear even as he squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could. The low light, a warm golden glow behind him, the pleasant sound of laughter and clinking glassware in the background, but his heart was breaking, because of a red dress. And he was trying to hide it, to laugh himself, to return the smile –

‘You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?’

“You’re confusing me,” he gasped, his voice coming out ragged, more like a whimper.

“Who led you to that day, James?” his doctor asked again. Her voice was like a whisper in his ear, only that couldn’t be possible, he hadn’t heard her move, stand. “Was it HYDRA?”

And the answer came to him, the answer he didn’t want to hear, and everything else came with it too, in the horrible way that memories sometimes came alive. He heard the words, yes, but felt the whiskey burning in his gut, too, not working fast enough -

‘Hell, no! The little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight …’

And the words he hadn’t said, the words he would never say, floating hazily in his mind, crowded out only by sudden stabs of anger, that fucking red dress. His mind whispering what his lips couldn’t: don’t you know I’d die for you? Don’t you know I’d rather die than –

‘I’m following him.’

He was crying. He hated crying here, hated crying in her presence, sure that every tear was a victory for her. He took in a ragged breath, trying to stop it, rubbing the back of his hand hard over one eye, then the other.

When he opened them, red and burning, she was still seated calmly at her desk, hands held in front of her.

“Love is terrifying, James,” she said, and immediately he looked down again, swallowed hard. He had to stay in control, no matter what she said. “The world doesn’t need HYDRA. There’s already something that can take everything from us. Steal our autonomy, make us give up our lives. Change who we are.”

“Please stop,” he made himself say. He swallowed again, trying not to listen.

“Can you say it?” she prompted. He heard the glide of her nail along the top of the desk. “Tell me. Did you fall, were you prepared to die, to stop HYDRA?”

The answer was so obvious, now, and it was so obvious that she knew. Suddenly, he felt himself losing it – his will fight it, to fight her. The truth had him by the throat.

“No,” he said. He stared out in front of him, blinking as he let fresh tears slide over his face. He could feel every breath, in and out, the only movement in his body.

“Then what were you willing to die for, James?” she asked, after a long moment of silence had stretched between them. “Who? Who did you love?”

He let his lips fall open. They knew he had fallen from the train. That was no secret, but – how did they know everything else? How could they know about love? He was sure he hadn’t told them that, even in the beginning, when he was crying like this, only in pain, so much pain, and the tears and blood had mixed together and they asked him over and over about –

“James?” his doctor urged.

He was sure he hadn’t talked about love. About Steve. It was the one thing he kept, even if it was only for a little while, even if he was destined to forget. He kept that one thing safe and pure and locked inside him, until nothing inside him could be pure again.

“I can’t,” he choked out, shaking his head hollowly.

He was sure she wouldn’t accept his answer, but there was nothing else he could think to say. She would keep pushing, and pushing, if not today then the next and the next until –

His shaking hand went still, his breath held for a moment. Was this it? Was he breaking again, falling back into –

He’d never been strong. He’d never been brave. That was Steve. Without Steve, he was just a good shot, a steady hand with a gun, a weapon with faith in only one thing. And that was exactly what they had made him.

“That’s all right, James,” his doctor said, her voice suddenly gentle. “I think we’ve made an incredible breakthrough today. As for your new friend –“

But he was already standing, stumbling toward the door. He rubbed at his eyes again, suddenly aware that other people would see him, look at him, would know. It was useless, anyway. He knew his eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks damp.

“Just remember,” she said, and he looked back briefly, just long enough to see her back straighten, her chin lift a little. “You can’t save her.”


	7. A Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been struggling to write for weeks now. It was a rough Christmas. And New Year's. It's just rough, I guess. Long chapter, though, to make up for it.

Today would not be an easy day.

He twisted his hand into the blanket, pulling absently at the rough fabric. Little loose threads scattered the top of it, evidence of time spent anxiously tugging them up and apart, anything for a distraction in the dark.

He wished they would give him a clock. He could almost imagine it, the relief of being able to watch the numbers slowly tick away. It would make it more bearable, he was sure of that. Or, better yet, a window. He knew he could train himself to sense the very beginnings of the sun rising, the subtle shift from black to grey.

But there was only darkness, and the gnawing anticipation of the knock on the door, the signal that the day was starting over again. He wished he knew how many minutes, how many hours, were left.

He pulled at a thread, thumbing it roughly between his thumb and forefinger. Anxiety cloaked him, heavier than the thin blanket, clutching his throat from the inside.

It would not be an easy day. He wouldn’t see Steve.

He paused at the thought of him, swallowing. Maybe he shouldn’t want to see Steve, didn’t deserve to see him, not after what he’d thought the day before. Running with his doctor’s words, believing them, believing that Steve –

He tugged the thread, tugged and tugged in the darkness until he felt it snap.

Steve hadn’t led him to fall. It wasn’t his fault. His doctor was right – love had been his undoing.

There was no way Steve could’ve stopped him from falling in love, letting his heart grow around a person he didn’t deserve, a person too good for him, a person with a destiny far greater than quiet nights in Brooklyn. 

It was no wonder that this destiny required leaving him behind. It made perfect sense.

But Steve was here now, where he shouldn’t be, for reasons he couldn’t know, cut off from that destiny. He was here, in front of him, and Bucky couldn’t help him, couldn’t set him free, and he wanted –

He pressed his eyes closed in the darkness, feeling the want briefly overtake his fear. He wanted – he wanted to keep him, to keep him here, trapped, with him. He wouldn’t let him go, even if he was given the chance. Wouldn’t set him free. Couldn’t. He was selfish, a gaping, needy hole of selfishness.

That was why he didn’t deserve him.

He blinked at the blackness of the ceiling, wishing for shadows to watch, birds to hear. There had been birds, even in the city, although he could no longer remember their little songs.

Sometimes he missed – he took in a heavy breath, trying to shut out the thought, but there was no point – nothing to stop it, no distractions. Sometimes he missed –

He had never heard the quiet, when he was the Soldier. Never stared at darkness, wishing for light. Except for jarring moments of confusion, it had all been nothingness, and sometimes he looked back on those empty stretches of time with a strange kind of yearning. 

There had been no Steve, and he wanted nothing. Never had to consider what he deserved and what he didn’t. A blissful oblivion.

He closed his eyes again. Open, closed – it didn’t matter. The same darkness.

He was so tired, sometimes, of the endlessness of thinking. The relentlessness of needing to feel.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

He rolled the pill on the inside of his cheek, debating the merits of whether or not to swallow.

Taking them, or not taking them – there didn’t seem to be a difference. Sometimes, though, he got a little thrill from refusing to swallow. Spitting it out, half-dissolved, into the bathroom sink – his own little rebellion. His last stand against HYDRA.

He swallowed the pill, looking out over the dayroom. Natalia was picking at her nails, her brilliant hair pulled back in a tight braid. He wondered if she had painted her nails, back when she was out there, in the real world, free to be vain and individual. If they had once always been slick and dark, like his doctor’s.

He looked away, out the window. Grey clouds stretched over the sky, all-encompassing, masking the sun into a pale white shadow.

A dog barked.

He blinked, startled, turning toward the sound. For a moment panic seized him – maybe this was the beginning. First a dog barking, then whispers, then voices. Maybe it was finally –

But Natalia had turned, too, abandoning her nails to watch the door uneasily. It had come from there, then – through the double doors that patients were walked through only once.

He tensed, heart beating in his throat. He heard something else – a faint clip, like a delicate horse. Click, click, click. Heels on the tile.

The door slowly opened, and his doctor emerged. She had an animal.

A dog, he thought. A large dog, with thick fur that rolled over its shoulders in a heavy wave, fur the color of dry cornstalks. It sat down heavily when his doctor stopped, a strange contrast to her slick black heels.

“I have a little treat for all of you!” she announced, reaching down and patting the dog at its neck. It opened its mouth, panting as it lazily smiled.

Part of him saw it as a smile. Part of him saw the dog as relaxed, leaning back into her touch, but another – he was staring, muscles seizing up, at the thick white canines revealed under its gums, wet with saliva.

He couldn’t – he had known dogs, before, but he couldn’t remember. Instead, a stronger memory surfaced, clawing at his mind in brief flashes. They’d had dogs, too, dogs this size, with dark fur, snarling, straining for him, teeth barred, digging into his flesh with sudden, crushing pain, ripping, nothing like the precision of a knife –

He heard a crash, blinked, heaving. Looking to the side, he saw his chair overturned next to him, and he raised a hand to his throat, trying to catch his breath.

Then Natalia was there, her thin body hovering over him, blocking his view of the dog.

“Breathe,” she said, her voice a low whisper. “Breathe deeply. It is not necessary that you touch the dog.”

He stared back up at her, hardly realizing that she’d spoken in Russian.

Quickly, she offered her hand, and he took it, shaking as he let her pull his weight forward. He righted the chair, releasing his breath heavily as he sat again.

If his doctor noticed his fall – she had to notice, he thought, she saw everything – she didn’t acknowledge it. He watched uneasily as she weaved among the patients, beaming at them as they awkwardly patted the dog’s back.

She moved closer. Natalia, he realized, had sat beside him, and was watching her with the same intensity. 

Her heels clicked, louder and louder as she neared their corner of the room, until his doctor and the dog were standing across from them. He looked down into its brown eyes, his stomach curling tighter with every breath.

“James,” she said. He swallowed, but didn’t look up. “Would you like to say hello?”

No, he wanted to say. The word formed in his mind, but he couldn’t open his lips. No, no –

“Leave him alone,” a voice said. Hard and cutting.

He turned to his side, mouth falling open a little when he realized it was Natalia. She was leaning forward in her own plastic chair, staring up icily at his doctor, plush lips a thin line.

The two women stared at one another for a moment, and dread pooled in his stomach every second. But his doctor only turned back to him, her face a mask of calm.

“James can answer on his own,” she said. Then she stood, waiting, hand tight on the leash.

He forced himself to look up again, look at the dog. It was oblivious to the tension, mouth still hung open in an easy smile, looking up briefly at his doctor before turning, expectantly, to him.

He flinched briefly at the sight of its teeth, but steeled himself. There was something there, something older and deeper than the attack dogs, something warm and yearning, something like what he felt for Steve. One day, once, he had wanted –

He curled his hand into a fist, reaching out.

The dog stepped forward, and his doctor let it, the leash loose at its side. He forced himself to breathe out, chest a cement block, as he waited, willing his hand not to shake.

The dog came closer still, sniffed his fist. Its nose bumped against his knuckles, cool and wet. Then, hesitation suddenly vanishing, the dog licked across his fingers in a sudden kiss.

He felt his body startle, but it was a warm shock. Warm, like its tongue.

“Hello,” he whispered, pulling his fist slowly back.

He watched for a moment as the dog stared back at him, smiling openly, tail wagging. He resisted the urge to glance up at his doctor, to see if he had earned her approval; instead, he kept his eyes firmly on the dog, even as Natalia reached out, too, scratching it firmly behind the ears. The tail wagging intensified, until the dog slowly closed its eyes, keening into her touch.

“That’s enough,” his doctor clipped suddenly. She gave the leash a rough little tug, and the dog opened its eyes, stepping back.

He let his weight fall back into the plastic chair, some of the tension draining from him. It was over. He wasn’t even watching the dog anymore, just staring down at his hand, knuckles still shimmering faintly from the kiss, when he heard its long, high pitched whine.

“Hey there, buddy,” a male voice was saying. He glanced up; Clint had approached the dog, kneeling down on the tile to greet it. He must’ve waited, he reasoned, until all the patients had had their turn. “Awe, hey, look at you!”

The dog whined again, desperately, straining against the leash until his doctor reluctantly loosened it. The dog surged forward, yelping, and Clint laughed, rustling the fur of its shoulders roughly in his hands. 

“Awe, man, you’re cute,” Clint continued, his voice low and eager. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you? What a good boy!”

He frowned, not sure what to make of such an open display of affection. Even though it was just a dog, it still seemed somehow – inappropriate.

He turned instinctively toward Natalia, wondering if she was having the same reaction. His frown only deepened; she was watching the pair of them intently, but her lips had fallen open, and something in her eyes had gone still.

The dog had finally yanked itself to just inches away from Clint’s chest, and was now showering his face in wet, eager kisses. Part of him recoiled – not sure he would ever want to get quite that close to the mouth, the teeth – but another part listened, stunned, at the other man’s laughter. It had been so long, since he’d heard laughter like that, free and unrestrained and genuine.

“Awe, hey! Wow!” Clint said, turning his head from one side to the other, letting the dog lick his cheeks freely before finally pulling back. He glanced up at the doctor, who had just began twitching her toe impatiently.

“What’s his name?” he asked, grinning.

His doctor frowned. He thought he could see her biting back a sigh.

“Lucky,” she said, tightening her grip on the leash.

“Lucky,” Clint repeated. For a moment, his hands on the dog moved more roughly, intensifying the petting, but then, they began to slow. He watched as Clint blinked, leaning back a little to stare at the dog.

“Yes,” his doctor snapped in confirmation. “But now that he’s said hello to all the patients, its time for Lucky to go.”

He expected Clint to withdraw, to stand, but instead he stayed frozen on the floor, blinking dumbly at the dog. It whined, high pitched and desperate, as his hands finally fell away to his sides.

He turned again to Natalia. Something was wrong here, he could sense it, and somehow, he knew that she could, too. She met his eyes briefly before turning them back to the scene before them, her face fallen away into blankness.

“Oh – all right,” Clint said, many seconds too late. He gave the dog a quick pat on the head, this one brief and awkward, before beginning to stand. “See ya, bud.”

His doctor gave the leash a firm pull, tugging the dog along with her as she turned back toward the door. But it whined, straining against it, lifting up its front legs and lunging toward Clint.

“It’s okay,” Clint said, but something in his body language was off. He was frozen, hesitant, as if holding himself back. “Go with the nice lady.”

The dog whined again, loudly, almost a low scream. It redoubled its efforts to reach Clint, jumping repeatedly up off the floor, paws flailing against it when it came back down.

“Obey,” his doctor hissed, abandoning all pretense of restraint and jerking the dog back roughly. It slid along the floor a few feet, half-turning, and once it realized it was going to be dragged away, it seemed to fight even harder, straining and whining until it broke into all out barking.

No one seemed to know what to do, least of all Clint. He stood there dumbly, watching as the dog was pulled back, yelping, before finally averting his eyes.

Bucky didn’t want to watch anymore, either. He looked down again at his hand, trying to block out the desperate sound of its barking, quickly degenerating into fitful howls. He could hear its claws drag against the cold tile.

“Come – here! –“ 

He glanced up at his doctor’s voice, just in time to see her reach down and take the dog by the collar instead, wrestling control of him by the neck. She stepped back, pulling it toward the door, the dog fighting every step.

He looked down again, wishing he could put hands over his ears, block out the sound of the horrible howling. He watched as Clint stepped forward, suddenly, defiantly, before falling back again.

The barking continued, loud and savage and miserable, until finally there was the slow creak of the door opening. A few seconds later, he heard it swing slowly shut again, the barking muffled. He waited, listening absently as the sound faded down the hall, accompanied by the swift click-click-click of heels.

He looked up again only when he sensed movement at his side. Natalia was standing. She crossed the room in swift, confident strides, stopping at Clint’s side. He was still standing, immobile, staring at the door.

She was saying something to him, brief, low words that carried back to him in soft murmurs. He watched as she reached out, gently resting her hand on the back of his elbow.

He felt sick. The barking should have terrified him, sent him reeling into a fit of paralyzing anxiety, but instead it seemed to have the opposite effect. It had wiped him clean, frozen him, like Clint, into a state of numb realization.

He gripped his hand into a fist, remembering the kiss. Sweet, and pointless.

One day, he was going to be the dog.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

It was after dinner, and he was going to take a shower.

He was on his way to the bathroom, white towel gripped in his hand. The fibers were rough from overuse, stiff with bleach, and it always had a stale chemical smell when he rubbed it over his wet hair, not unlike the vomit-yellow hunks of soap they issued. These things were unpleasant, but he still looked forward to his showers.

The hot water lasted for only a few minutes, but before it went cold – he could stand under the spray, let the water roll down his face in warm waves, and almost lose himself.

There was always an orderly assigned to stand outside while he showered. They timed him, would shout inside if it took him longer than ten minutes, though it never did. To make sure he didn’t hurt himself, they said at first.

It was silly, like most of their rules. With only one hand, he would never be able to rip the towel into strips that quickly. Maybe if he smuggled in a pair of scissors – but then, if he already had a blade –

For your privacy, they said later. To make sure someone didn’t walk in. Accidently.

And rape him, he’d concluded, but that was even sillier. Even without the arm, he could easily defend himself from any of the other patients.

Of course, there were people in the institution that were not patients. People who had privileged access to things like towels. And scissors.

He’d been too afraid to shower, at first. He’d turn on the water, splash a handful over his hair, pretend, but wouldn’t strip down, sure that the moment he stepped naked out of his clothes someone would walk in.

But he’d only been able to keep that up for a week or so, knowing someone – everyone – would eventually realize he hadn’t cleaned himself. So then he’d graduated to washing as quickly as possibly, smearing himself with soap in a rushed daze and throwing his clothes back on as quickly as possible, shivering, his body still wet.

But then, months passed, and no one came in. Now he breathed deeply under the hot water, scrubbed himself raw.

It would probably be Clint tonight, he reasoned. He didn’t mind Clint as much as the other orderlies. He had a habit of either humming or singing under his breath outside the door, a constant confirmation that he remained safely outside.

Only, when he approached the bathroom – there was no one.

He waited, knotting the rough towel in his fist. Minutes passed. Ten, fifteen. Twenty.

This never happened. He looked up and down the quiet hallway, shoulders tensing. He wondered if he should inform someone.

Only – he didn’t want to miss the chance to shower. It mattered more, somehow, now that Steve was here. Steve, who would notice his dirty hair and convince himself he’d given up. Steve, who hovered close to him, close enough to smell the chemicals still clinging to his skin.

He clutched the towel harder, darting inside – and froze.

There was already someone inside.

It was Clint, his back turned to him, shoulders slightly hunched, head bowed. A delicate hand curled around the back of his neck, pulling him down. And behind him, pressed against him, a thick mess of wet, dark hair, a pale thigh –

He took a step back, nearly stumbling. Natalia broke the kiss, pulling back slightly, just enough to look at him. Clint bowed his head further, kissing along her neck as she stared at him, her eyes calm, knowing. Daring him to watch.

He turned, rushing out of the bathroom before he could see more, but easing the door shut quietly behind him. Once outside, he hesitated, paralyzed and unsure.

He breathed out heavily, willing himself to calm down. He lifted a hand to his face, realized, bizarrely, that it was hot. He was blushing.

He didn’t know what to do. Even though he’d done nothing, he felt a rush of shame surge through him, shame and confusion and uncertainty, and he decided, impulsively, to go to his room. No one could blame him for anything, there. It was where he was supposed to be.

He began walking briskly down the hallway, comforted by that thought, clinging to it, and almost immediately ran into someone turning the corner.

They made a yelp of surprise, and he stumbled, tipping to his side and falling to his knees. He looked up, eyes wide, startled.

It was Steve.

“Oh, hey, sorry!” he was saying, crouching down immediately so that their eyes were level. “I didn’t see you there, Buck.”

“S’my fault,” he mumbled, his blush deepening as Steve reached out, quickly offering him his hand. He took it, bracing his weight against the solid grip as he stood.

“No harm done,” Steve replied easily. For a moment, he let his hand linger in his grip, warm and firm, but then he suddenly let it slip free. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No,” he answered immediately. His voice sounded absurdly shy, and he cleared his throat, trying to startle it back into something normal. “You’re – you’re not supposed to be here.”

He watched as Steve smiled softly, a sudden jolt of panic seizing his mind – he’d just all but admitted how intimately he knew Steve’s schedule. That he’d memorized it. Lived by it.

“You’re right,” he said, still hovering close to him. “Had a shift switched. Coming back from the shower?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, meeting his eyes briefly before glancing down again. He was still holding the towel, balled up in his fist. “Just – just heading back to my room.”

He let his eyes flicker up again, and was startled to see that Steve’s smile had faltered.

“Bucky,” he said, carefully, and almost immediately, trepidation began to pool in his gut. He knew. “Tell me the truth.”

“I am heading back to my room,” he said, the words rushing out of him. Being caught in a lie by Steve made him feel awful, small, like a guilty child being reprimanded by its mother. “I swear. You can walk me there.”

“You didn’t just take a shower,” Steve said, slowly, ignoring the bait. “Your hair is dry. And you know you’re not allowed to have personal towels.”

He hadn’t thought of that, when he’d rushed out of the bathroom. What he was going to do with the towel once he got back to his room. There was a bin next to the showers for used towels – you didn’t take them back out with you.

“I didn’t steal it,” he said immediately. He wasn’t even thinking anymore – panic was taking over, a panic intensified ten times over by the fact that this was Steve. Steve, who he wanted – needed – to trust him. “I – I’m sorry – here, take it.”

He held out the towel, waiting for Steve to take it, but he only frowned down at it for a second before looking up again, firmly meeting his eyes.

“Bucky,” he said, again, his voice maintaining the same careful, level edge. “What’s wrong?”

Nothing, he thought. The word was on the tip of his tongue, and he knew, if he could only get his head on straight, that he had the capacity to lie. It was a necessary survival skill in this place.

But this was Steve, and he didn’t want to lie to him again. 

When he didn’t answer, Steve looked away, looked past him, down the empty hallway. Down to the bathroom door.

Shit, shit, shit –

“Is someone in there?” he asked slowly, confirming every one of Bucky’s fears. He curled in on his shoulders, looking down and away, breath lodging in his throat. He couldn’t let Steve –

“Bucky,” Steve said again. The way he said his name, so gently, with so much concern – it nearly broke him. A few more times of hearing his name said like that could coax him into anything, send him falling instantly to his knees in confession. “Talk to me. Did someone hurt you?”

“No,” he answered, softly, genuinely. Steve must’ve believed him, because he relented for a moment, pausing to gather his thoughts.

“All right,” he said, finally. “But something did scare you. Is there someone in the bathroom, Bucky?”

Maybe he could let Steve walk in on them. It was wrong, after all. Clearly wrong, clearly a violation of the rules, rules so absolute they never needed to be spelled out. He wouldn’t be punished. That would be Clint. And maybe Natalia – but she was strong.

Still –

A series of images converged at once, flooding his thoughts. Natalia, telling him to breathe, trying to defend him from his doctor. The gentle way she put her hand on Clint after she had dragged away the dog, the way her eyes went wide and soft when she looked at him. Steve, alone with him in the same bathroom, crouched in front of him, rubbing his back in slow circles as he –

“Don’t go in there,” he said.

It was clearly not what Steve had been expecting. He stepped back a little, surprised, surveying him.

“What?” he asked incredulously. “Why? Why shouldn’t I go in there?”

“Just,” Bucky said, slowly, his voice catching as he swallowed. “Please? Just – don’t go in there.”

“Bucky,” Steve said, but it was different this time. Pitying. “You know I have to.”

“You don’t,” he said, desperately. But he knew, instinctively, that they weren’t close enough for this. Steve wouldn’t break the rules, not for him. Especially without any explanation. “Just – trust me?”

Steve sighed, looking down into his eyes briefly. Then he moved to walk past him.

Bucky shifted in the same direction, blocking his way.

He watched as Steve’s shoulders stiffened, his face clouding with conflict. His blue eyes still seemed unsure, but gradually, they steeled with determination.

“You know you can’t stop me,” he said, finally, voice firm, but imploring.

“I know,” Bucky whispered back. And it was true – physically, without the arm –

\- and even if he could overpower him, he knew only the thinnest thread of loyalty tugged him along this path, that ultimately, nothing, and no one, could lead him to go against Steve.

“Then let me go,” Steve said. He moved forward again, slowly, straight toward Bucky, expecting him to step aside.

Only he didn’t. He stepped forward, closing the distance between them, lifted his chin, and kissed him.

It felt surreal at first – like a dream, because it had to be a dream, couldn’t possibly be real. He kissed him, remembering the countless times he’d wanted it, wanted to do just this, and had forced himself to hold back for equally countless reasons. It was impossible that now, finally, so easily, he’d given in.

It didn’t feel real, until Steve pressed into him, strong hands just barely ghosting his sides, and their lips moved in tandem, gently, until, just as suddenly as Bucky had stepped forward, Steve stepped back.

Bucky blinked, looking up into his face. He looked startled, like a spooked animal, eyes wide and blinking back at him.

He lifted a hand to his mouth, parting his lips even as he stared. They felt impossibly warm, still buzzing with the memory of the touch, and as he looked out at Steve, he couldn’t think of anything to say.

This – it was what he wanted for Natalia, why he had protected her. So she could have a chance at this, at something stirring alive in her chest, heavy and eager and yearning, and have a hope of satisfying it. He wanted it for himself.

He was still silent, and Steve was still staring.

“You should –“ the other man started, breaking their silence. But his voice was broken, uneven, and there was no authority to it any longer.

Bucky didn’t need to be told what to do, or where to go. There was only one place he belonged at that moment – alone, in his room, like always.

He reached out his hand, still clutching the towel, and offered it to Steve. He took it and, with one last glance into Bucky’s eyes, turned and walked back down the hallway the way he’d come.

Bucky half-turned, glancing back at the bathroom door. He waited, giving Steve a bit of a start, so that it wouldn’t look as if they were coming from the same place if he ran into anyone else.

Then he began to walk down the empty hall, feet shuffling and mind racing.


	8. Rejection

In the end, the high he’d gotten from the kiss crumbled. Like anything else, it wasn’t made to last.

It was a gradual fall, at least. For the first few minutes after shutting himself in his room, he lay on the bed, eyes pressed shut, and he could still feel the warmth of Steve's mouth clinging to the edge of his memory, almost tangible, the sensation renewed by his tongue licking curiously over his lips.

But then, like a sand castle beaten down by the waves, it slipped, replaced by the seeping chill of his mind. What he knew would happen – the only thing that could happen, when life shifted back toward normalcy and logic. It was a cold thought, because as much as he knew Steve, wanted Steve, believed in Steve, he knew that even he wouldn’t be able to fight that kind of inertia.

He felt hollowed out, rubbed raw and empty, by the time the soft knocking came at his door.

Steve always looked so beautiful, even with his eyes averted, his lips pursed in a tense frown. The florescent light should’ve bleached him, washed him out, but instead Bucky saw the glow of sunlight. Maybe because he could never quite get used to him being here, was always so relieved that he was real.

He didn’t say hello. He sensed a fork in the road, the moment he stepped back and allowed Steve to step over the threshold. He had a choice. He could make it easier, for Steve. He could let him feel a little bit better about what he was about to do.

But he wouldn’t. He had never really been all that good, at being selfless.

“Bucky,” Steve said, finally, when the door was safely shut behind him and it was clear it was up to him to break the silence. His voice was strained, quiet, like he had to wrestle every word out of his mouth. “We should talk about –“

“I know you’re here to reject me,” Bucky said. He looked away, at the floor, the corners of his crumbled blanket. He allowed himself that, let himself be a coward. “But first tell me why you kissed me back.”

He heard Steve’s startled intake of breath, closed his eyes. He felt so tired, like the kiss had used every particle of energy in his body to send him reeling, and now there was nothing left.

But he wanted to hear it. Wanted to hear something, other than the obvious. Something good. He thought he could stretch it thin, make it last. For a few more months, at least.

“It’s not you,” Steve said, after a moment, his voice imploring, apologetic.

He let his eyes flash up, jaw tensing.

“That isn’t what I asked,” he said. He wished Steve would just cooperate, though of course, if he did, that would’ve meant he wasn’t Steve. “Not why you’re rejecting me. Why you kissed me back.”

Steve hesitated. Bucky watched him suck in his bottom lip. He wondered if Steve had prepared a bit of a speech, if he was ruining it, now, forcing him to answer questions that were far easier to sweep under the rug.

But he wanted to hear it – wanted the words so he could cage them in his mind, let them echo in the hazy moments before waking when he felt senseless and hopeful.

“I can’t tell you why I kissed you,” Steve was saying. Not like him, to take the easy way out. “There’s not just one – but, Bucky, you have to know that I’m not rejecting you. It isn’t about _you_. There’s so much more going on here that I have to consider –“

A little surge of anger. Bucky liked them, the rare moments when he was stirred up enough to actually feel anger, quickly though it burned out.

“That _you_ have to consider?” he repeated icily. As true as it was, he hated to meditate on the fact that his life operated mostly outside of his control. Even now, Steve was absorbing all the responsibility, taking it upon himself to decide if their kiss could lead to anything else.

Steve sighed, bowing his head and wracking his fingers back through his hair. It wasn’t fair, he decided. Not for him, and not for Steve, who always had to believe the right thing was right until he was finally proven wrong in the end.

“Yes, I do have things to consider,” the other man snapped, but there was strain in his voice, resignation. “I don’t know what you’re looking for me to say, Buck. That if we lived in a perfect little bubble, if we lived completely outside of circumstance, that we –“

Bucky resisted the urge to bark out a laugh. It was a bad habit, a very bad habit, he knew, to laugh when really he wanted to fall to his knees and fist his hands into his hair and scream. But it was a little funny. It was a good question – what had kept them apart, all this time? What was keeping them apart now? HYDRA, or ‘circumstance’?

“You think I can’t consent,” he said instead. Edging the conversation along, because Steve was never going to say it, and they didn’t have all night.

This seemed to throw him a little, and Steve straightened up, abandoning his train of thought.

“I could lose my job,” he said, frowning down at him.

“No,” Bucky said, quietly. It would’ve been nice, if it were that simple, that clear cut. “It’s more than that. You think I can’t consent.”

He could’ve elaborated. Consented to being kissed, to being touched, fucked, loved, rescued. He decided it was more elegant to leave it unspecified.

Steve swallowed, and Bucky watched his Adam’s apple bob nervously. He didn’t want to hurt him, Bucky reminded himself. He was trying to be kind and vague and it was Bucky who was pushing him, so later, he’d really only have himself to blame.

“I’m in a position of authority over you,” the other man said slowly. He paused, looking down. “We can’t just – ignore that. And even if that weren’t an issue, you’re –“

Fragile, weak, Bucky’s mind supplied. Love would snap you like a twig –

Steve swallowed again, like he didn’t want to go on.

“You’re here,” he finished, licking his lips slowly. “You’re here for a reason. I don’t know your – your history, Buck, but if I did anything to distract you from your recovery –“

“You think that’s all it would be?” Bucky snapped, before he was even really conscious of speaking. “A distraction?”

He wished he had it in himself to argue. Had the words to convince Steve that his mouth could stitch him back together again, that if they could just lie together, breathing in each other, that in the quiet of those moments he would figure out how to set them both free.

Steve looked pushed to the limit. He was being so cruel, and Steve was trying so hard to be kind, and he couldn’t let him, because he was beyond accepting that kind of politeness. He wanted what was real, even if it was raw and awful. All or nothing.

He struggled to meet Steve’s eyes, and there he saw the real argument. The one that Steve didn’t want to make. It said that if they went down this road, it wouldn’t be just a detour, a distraction –

Steve was afraid he would be the one to fuck him up again. Shatter him. Take all the pieces of himself he’d imagined he’d pulled together into some kind of whole and throw them against the wall.

It wasn’t an unfair assumption, Bucky decided. It wasn’t like it hadn’t happened before.

“You wouldn’t hurt me,” he said. He made his voice low, and humble, and he didn’t quite realize how desperate the words sounded until they tumbled out of his lips.

“I wouldn’t mean to,” Steve said. He shifted a little bit closer.

This was it. Bucky could feel it, the end – could feel himself relenting. He hadn’t expected to win this argument. He’d known it was impossible, but he’d still hoped – Steve had never answered his question. He hadn’t gotten it – that one little thing to hold on to.

“Kiss me again,” he asked. He felt shame well up inside him at how pathetic he sounded, felt it flood and burn his cheeks. He reached out, loosely grasping at the front of Steve’s scrubs, but kept his head down.

A moment later, he felt lips press smoothly down on his forehead.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. 

Bucky didn’t resist as he stepped back, the fabric pulling free of his fingers.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

He watched Natalia. She seemed almost cheerful, her movements light and deliberate, effortless, like a dancer. She had evidently had words with Clint, because just after sitting down for breakfast, he had slipped next to them, palming her a few packets of salad dressing like a drug deal.

She ripped open the packets easily, her hard nails cutting into the plastic, not even needing her teeth. He continued to watch as she drizzled the ranch over her eggs, struggling not to let his stomach lurch too violently.

“You’re not eating,” she said absently. She didn’t sound concerned, exactly, or even surprised. Just aloofly interested.

“You’re whoring yourself out for ranch dressing,” he said, after a moment had passed and she was moving on to oozing out her second packet.

That earned a raise of her eyes, and she narrowed them. She had long lashes, dark, even without the aid of mascara.

“You’ll draw attention to yourself if you don’t eat,” she said, her voice an octave lower. 

A warning. Good. 

“Is that really the best he can do?” he drawled. She was right, of course, about the food, and he raised his fork to his eggs, stabbing into them before reconsidering. They were like an ugly shade of Steve’s hair. “Salad dressing? Or does a candy bar take more than one round in the shower?”

“Someone’s a little tense this morning,” she said, squeezing every last drop out of her plastic packet before discarding it next to her milk carton. “Maybe I’m not the only one in need of an … extra therapy session.”

He clamped his mouth shut at that, not so much because he didn’t want to fight with Natalia (he did, it felt soothing, like a release, like bleeding out the anger Steve didn’t deserve) but because he didn’t want to think too explicitly about what had happened in that bathroom.

“You knew I was next in line,” he said icily instead.

She hummed in agreement. He could barely see her eggs now, covered in the syrupy chalk-white of the dressing. He winced internally as she lifted the first dripping bite to her lips.

“Clint altered the schedule last minute,” she said, licking a smear of white from the corner of her mouth. “He can do the same for you, if you like.”

He tensed at that, certain that now he might actually, literally, vomit in disgust. He was glad he hadn’t touched his runny excuse for eggs.

“Clint?” he said, all but choking out the name. “I don’t want his hands anywhere near –“

“That isn’t what I meant,” she said quickly, taking another hefty bite.

Oh, he thought. His shoulders relaxed in relief, even as his mind itched to think further into what she was implying.

“Why did you think I wouldn’t turn you in?” he asked instead. He leaned back, appraising. He didn’t know her well, but she didn’t seem so stupid as to trust him.

Natalia chewed for a moment, swallowing hard before taking up another bite.

“You know better than to carelessly make enemies,” she said, pausing as she went to take a stiff drink of her milk. “Nothing in it for you, anyway. There are no brownie points in this hellhole.”

“Fair enough,” he muttered. He stared down at his eggs. He should eat them, should force himself. Be like Natalia, swallow them down like gulps of air. But he couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed at the assumption that he wouldn’t rat on her simply because it wasn’t worth it to him. He had hoped to appear more of a threat than that. “You might’ve waited more than a week.”

He muttered the last phrase under his breath, intending it to be read as an insult. Another jab at her being a whore – although, he had to admit, there was something admirable about it. He wished his mind and body could be linked like that, his thoughts uncomplicated enough to allow for such superficial cravings, for needs that could be easily met with something physical.

He was surprised when he glanced up and saw her musing over the words. Taking them seriously.

“I wouldn’t have rushed it,” she said, almost lamentably, as she lifted another bite of her ranch-covered eggs. “Only – it had to be that night. The dog triggered him.”

She chewed slowly, swallowed after a moment.

“He was vulnerable,” she finished.

His mouth fell open a little as her words washed over him. They didn’t make sense, and when things didn’t make sense he tended to panic so – he pressed his eyes closed, hard enough to make light dance in the darkness behind them. It didn’t make sense –

But then he was remembering slipping her feet out of silk shoes, carefully uncrossing the ribbons when he could’ve much more easily cut them, skimming his fingertips over the blood and ugliness hidden underneath, none of it matching her face, young and lovely but empty, tracing the bones of her ankle –

He opened his eyes, stared at her.

“Who are you?” he asked, suddenly. He remembered her thighs, her strength. A different body, with the same hard eyes.

She looked away briefly, picking up a small piece of bacon that was burnt all along the edges.

“I wouldn’t worry about me,” she said, softly. She broke the piece into two, then three, nibbling the smallest absently. Like she was trying to make it last. “I'm a little disappointed, to be honest. You haven’t made much progress with him.”

She met his eyes, then shifted them pointedly to Clint. His body language perked up immediately, as if he’d been waiting, this whole time, to catch just a moment of her attention. She stood, and Bucky watched as the orderly followed the movement of her body with his eyes.

“I needed another trigger,” she said, leaning down toward him. “It was my best option. _I_ was my best option.”

He wanted to reach out, grab her loose sweatshirt by the collar and pull her close to him and demand, with no restraint or politeness or strategy, what she knew. Because it was clear that she knew something, knew much more than him, and the first second they were alone together, he was going to find out.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re trying to say,” he growled, because there was no time for that, now. Even without the orderlies, the other patients, listening, they’d soon be shuffled into whatever mindless craft session was scheduled for that day.

Natalia sighed a little, picking up her plastic tray.

“What I’m trying to say,” she said, her voice carefully monotone, “Is that I know you love him. For his sake, fight harder.”

And then she turned, walking away with her tray. He couldn’t help but feel a little like Clint as he watched her retreat, staring after her like a lost puppy.

Her words echoed hollowly in his mind.

_I know you love him._

But that was impossible. No one could know that. Not even Steve knew that.

He picked up his tray, too, movements shifting into auto-pilot. Appearances be damned – he didn’t care who saw him tilting an untouched meal into the trash. There was no way she could know. Not unless she knew him, and she didn’t know him, because –

_‘Did they break?’ he asked, his voice low, far away, almost not his own. She flinched under his touch, but let him continue, fingertips running over the tendons in her foot, the bones inside arching like birds’ wings._

_‘Hard to say,’ she whispered –_

They’d never met. There was no way she could know, unless, somehow –

She knew Steve.


	9. Right

In the days that followed, Bucky let himself slip.

He tried, at first. He had good intentions. He had thought, maybe if he could just corner him, look him in the eyes, he would understand, relent. It had never been complicated before. He had never needed a plan. All he had ever needed to do was let Steve look at him and then he would know, would draw out all his secrets with one careful frown.

Well. At least the secrets they didn’t reciprocate.

But he had ruined that now. Or maybe it had been ruined for a long time, the connection severed when he enlisted. Or fell. Or tried to kill him in the street.

He wasn’t sure. He only knew that when he tried to look at Steve, he looked away, like he was living in a dark room and Bucky was a painful glimpse at the sun.

It made him slip. Made him shut down, his emotions washed away like footprints in the sand. He was hollow again, though he knew now that he didn’t want to be – knew that feeling nothing was as good as stopping time, and he shouldn’t, he should be using every second to –

It whispered at him, nagged at him, her voice. Fight. Fight harder. He just wasn’t sure how he was supposed to fight the bars on the windows and the pills and being held prisoner when he could barely fight against himself, push himself enough toward indifference to slide out from underneath his blanket each morning. Without Steve –

He couldn’t escape the contradiction. He had to fight. For Steve, to save Steve.

But he couldn’t fight, without him.

Natalia knew. She would meet his eyes, and used the half-second of connection to stare down at him accusingly. Every look brought back her words, but it was increasing difficult to take them to heart, because he was beginning to think he hated her.

She had Clint. He wasn’t sure why she wanted him but she had taken him back, and it had been so easy for her. Just one look at her wet naked body and now he couldn’t look away, was constantly trailing her in the halls and in the cafeteria and in the dayroom –

He hated the way they touched. His fingers brushing against hers when both were sure no one (except for him – Natalia knew he was watching, but posed no threat) could see, bringing back bizarre flashes of memory, of Steve’s mouth licking fairy floss off his long delicate fingers while the crowd surged around them and he stared –

It wasn’t fair, and it stayed with him, the seething burden of that injustice, even more than the larger fact that he was trapped here. He had kissed Steve, and that should’ve been the trigger, should’ve fixed it all, and together they could’ve made a plan to escape. It should’ve turned the tables back to their rightful place, making it possible again for Steve to rescue him and not the other way around.

But instead he was watching Clint slip tiny packages of food into Natalia’s hands – crushed peanuts, once, that she had mixed into her mashed potatoes – during the day and himself into her room at night, and it had been two nights maybe three and still Steve hadn’t –

So he had let himself slip. Let his soul go blank for a little while, tried to embrace the sense of nothingness that had once been his only form of comfort.

He hated that it was no longer a possibility.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

They left him there, alone, to watch.

At first it had surprised him – why he was left to guard such a meek little thing, just a girl in a black leotard, hard pulled back tight into a perfect bun on the crown of her head, eyes closed, shoulder blades arching from her back beneath her lifted arms.

She was harmless, and yet he was left to watch. Instructed to inform them only when she fell. He had felt relief at those instructions – brief and foreign, a kiss of a breeze on his mind, but it was there – because he was not asked to kill her, torture her, pull apart her lithe little body piece by piece. Only to watch.

He did. She was like a statue, barely breathing, her body betraying her only with the most subtle rise of her chest. Her arms never faltered, held over her body in a halo, her knees locked, the toes of her silk shoes in perfect vertical ailment with her ankles.

In another world, she would have been beautiful to him. They had taken that from him long before, the ability to appreciate beauty, but maybe it was better that his eyes didn’t linger on her pale, bare legs, stripped of their flesh-colored tights but still almost perfect, blemishless. Better to feel nothing more than the slightest twinge of admiration as she stood, motionless on her toes, eyes closed to the glimmer of sunlight occasionally catching in the broken glass scattered around her on the polished floor.

He watched, he waited, following orders. He wasn’t sure how much time passed – hours, he was certain, though he hadn’t given thought to keeping track, because they had placed no limitation on the time – and when she fell, it was sudden, like a puppet whose strings were slashed all at once.

She didn’t cry out in pain. She held her shoulders stiffly as if merely assuming a new position, this one requiring that she kneel. She didn’t open her eyes, even as the blood began to slowly seep out from beneath her legs.

And then he was walking toward her – why, he wasn’t sure, his orders were to inform them but they hadn’t given explicit orders not to touch – and reaching out, offering her his gloved flesh hand.

She hadn’t looked at him, hadn’t flinched at his approach. But as he waited, she lifted her hand and placed it delicately in his, and he remembered –

_\- a wide smile effortless on his face, mirrored in hers as she accepted, lifting herself up from the table where her legs were carefully pressed together and to the side under her dress, the whiskey making his thoughts warm and loose, his eyes drifting aimlessly from her cherry red lips to scan the crowd, where had he –_

\- doing something like it before. He pulled her up, and only then did she show any weakness, her legs stiff beneath her as she struggled to stand, countless rivulets of blood weaving a path from her knees to the silk ribbons tied above her ankles.

He walked her to the wall, and she sunk against the mirror, resting her head back under the lowest bar. Then he tugged her calf toward him, feeling her muscles tense beneath his hands as her legs were pulled apart, only to gradually relax when he began to pick the glass shards out of her blood-washed skin.

He was running on instinct, memories clouding his mind in troubling flashes, a dangerous thing, because once they started to return they kept coming faster and faster and that would mean being reset, but he couldn’t help it, lifting her ankle, leaning over it tenderly, only then he’d had a warm wet rag and now he had nothing, just cold metal fingers to sort glass from flesh with only the dullest sensation of her warmth registering. Nudging each piece out carefully –

_\- Jesus Christ, Stevie, that’s gonna leave a – goddamn it, hold still, when your Ma –_

“Why are you doing this?” she asked suddenly. Quietly, as if they were listening. Perhaps they were.

He couldn’t answer that, couldn’t draw an explanation from the muddled rush of information that was flooding him – at that amount, an anxious longing for ice, could they afford, could he afford - and then the smell of the sawdust it was packed in but damn it they couldn’t, he couldn’t –

So he said nothing, pulling out a particularly long shard and setting it aside. A fresh rivulet of blood followed its removal, and he frowned as his eyes followed the dark bead, trailing down her calf, lower and lower, until it seeped into her pink ribbons in a tiny blossom of red-brown.

“Your shoes,” he said, and realized they were the first words he’d said in a long time. Weeks, maybe. His voice was cracked with disuse, unfamiliar even to him.

“It’s fine,” the girl said. She pursed her lips, looking down at her legs. Some of the cuts had stopped bleeding, the lines beneath them already drying in blackening cracks. “They aren’t for show.”

But he started to take them off anyway, untying the ribbons carefully even though he had a knife, knew the task would be far more efficient if he simply cut them away. But he untied them instead, tugging the silk knot until it fell apart effortlessly. He could feel the eyes of the girl on him, suspicious and intense as he pulled the shoe free of her foot, but she made no effort to stop him.

What he revealed was far worse than the fresh cuts, though nothing of course compared to what was often his own work. Bruises bloomed along the side of the foot, marring the snow-white flesh, and dried blood had worked its way into the outline of every nail, one cracked, the smallest toe red hot as he skimmed his cool metal fingers against it.

“Did they break?” he asked, his voice low, far away, almost not his own. She flinched under his touch, but let him continue, fingertips running over the tendons in her foot, the bones inside arching like birds’ wings.

“Hard to say,” she whispered.

After a moment, he dropped her foot, easing it gently onto the polished wood of the floor next to her discarded slipper. He turned his attention back to the glass, brushing away the fresh blood to find the pieces glinting beneath –

_\- I know it burns, Steve, don’t – would it kill ya to hold still? Don’t –_

“Don’t flinch,” he said, even though long seconds had passed since she had. She blinked at him, eyes a dark mixture of confusion and distrust.

“What did they take you from?” she asked. Her voice came like an echo, receding into the rise of other voices, his own commanding voice, frightened and annoyed, helpless and infuriated, from the memories. “They didn’t raise you here.”

He wanted to shake him, take his thin shoulders in his hands and shake him. Didn’t he realize, if they knocked out a tooth there was nothing he could do about it? There was no affording a dentist. Or if they hit his head hard enough, Jesus, and he found him too late, lifeless and crumpled in a dirty alley, didn’t he know his family couldn’t afford two funerals, two graves?

Another shard of glass, another fresh run down her leg, like a run in a stocking, like what his Ma used to wear, like what the girls painted on when they rationed the nylon for the war to make parachutes –

“Who are you?” she asked, voice even more hushed than before. Not frightened but – curious. Even she could see he was coming undone. They would see it too, they would wipe him, wipe him blank immediately, he was coming apart –

“Don’t move,” he said. There were still so many tiny pieces, so much hidden beneath all that blood.

_Hey – don’t move, okay, Stevie? I’m sorry I yelled, I ain’t angry at you I just – hey, okay, please, hold still. Let me take care of you, huh? I’m gonna –_

“I’m gonna take care of you,” he whispered, finishing the thought. But the accent was lost, in the translation to Russian.

__

__\--- --- --- --- --- ---_ _

__

He blinked up into the darkness, the dream still fresh with him. He felt the strange emptiness that sometimes came with his dreams, a kind of cancelling out – part of his mind recoiling in horror, another yearning for more, more detail, enough to finally piece together the truth. He couldn’t decide what to feel, and for the moment, he was stagnated, frozen.

He knew her, he realized, but when? She had been so young. It was hard to judge, with her present body so emaciated but – she had been very young, even if the plumpness in her cheeks hadn’t matched the cold resignation in her eyes. So it had to have been years ago –

But she knew Steve. Or did she know Steve? Maybe she only knew that he knew Steve. But somehow she knew more - knew that he loved him, even though he had never said, never told anyone that he –

He pressed his fingers into his temple, resisting the urge to groan. How was it possible that she knew the both of them? Knew everything, when they’d been separated for so long?

He rolled onto his side, shivering as the blanket was tugged down and bared his shoulder.

He couldn’t rely on dreams for answers.

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Talking was usually tolerated in art class, as long as it was kept discreet. The willingness to socialize with another human being was evidently held in roughly the same esteem as pushing together a lop-sided pot, or decorating a frame that would never hold photos.

He nudged his chair a little closer to Natalia’s thigh, pausing for a moment before he began. As a pretense, he watched her paint – little smudges of canary yellow and burnt orange, another cityscape, but this one a skyline he didn’t recognize. It looked dirty, and exotic. Eastern Europe, maybe.

“You were a dancer,” he said, when enough time had passed. He kept his voice hushed, but louder than a whisper. Whispers drew attention.

He watched as a smile drew up her lips at that. A curt smile, brief and ironic, like a flinch.

She didn’t answer. He watched as she dipped her paint into her water cup, the excess color swirling away into brown. Then she carefully swiped it through the azure blue.

“You danced until your feet bled,” he continued, as she touched the brush to the bare canvas.

“We all did,” she said, pursing her lips. Bending her head, kneading her brush into the paint for more color.

He swallowed, pushing down the frustration that was steadily building in his throat. He had hoped to avoid being direct, but now that he was here, in this moment, he couldn’t remember why.

“You know Steve,” he prompted.

She smiled a little, again, at that, dabbing her brush on the canvas. It was a different smile. Still tight, but less painful – wistful, maybe.

“I don’t think I can tell you anything about Steve,” she said carefully, dipping her brush into the dirty water again, tapping it loudly against the side of the glass, “That you don’t already know yourself.”

He took in a slow breath. It seemed impossible that he’d managed to forget someone so infuriating.

“How fucking helpful,” he said, gritting his teeth together. He had to keep his voice even, conversational. Couldn’t draw attention.

She glanced at him briefly, barely tilting her chin in his direction.

“I was never trained in being helpful,” she said, pushing her brush into cherry red a little harder than necessary as she emphasized the last word. “But – I’m being honest with you. I don’t think much has changed.”

He frowned at her, teeth digging into his lower lip.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked, bending just a little further over her shoulder.

She frowned herself, evidently musing as she dabbed the red onto a building. It was burning, he saw now.

“He wanted to follow his conscience,” she answered softly, flicking her brush up to trace the outline of the flames. “Do the right thing, consequences be damned.”

He heard himself make a low hum of approval, holding back a scoffing laugh.

“You do know him,” he said, leaning back a little in his chair.

“It is an admirable quality,” Natalia continued, dipping her brush into the burnt orange even though it was still streaked with red. “Until you take everyone else down with you.”

He blinked at that, frowning, wondering. Was that how Steve had ended up here? Did he think he could storm in, save him, and in the pursuit of that become trapped here himself?

He shuddered at the thought, knowing he would come to it again. If they ever got out, if they were ever safe, he would give him a strongly worded lecture on that tendency. Another argument with Steven Grant Rogers that he was destined to lose.

“I tried to trigger him,” he said, cutting again to the chase. There wasn’t much time left before they would be shuffled away to the next activity and their conversation would be cut short. “The way that you did, with Clint. It didn’t work.”

He waited, listened as Natalia hummed, considering his words. He tried to ignore the smirk that threatened to spread across her face.

“Well,” she said, after too long of a moment had passed, and Bucky was beginning to consider snatching her brush away and forcing her to give him her full attention. “He must think it’s wrong, then. That’s the way it works with Steve, right? Black and white? So make it seem right again.”

His mouth fell open a little at that, and he closed it immediately, trying to mask the expression of utter loss on his face.

“How am I supposed to fucking do that?” he hissed.

As if it were so easy. As if Steve didn’t have an endless list of why it was wrong, as if he weren’t a stubborn jackass on top of it. Maybe she’d never met him at all.

She shrugged, adding the tiniest touch of emerald green to the blaze licking out of a shattered window.

“It should be easy,” she said conversationally, pulling back to survey her work. “If it already is. Right, I mean.”

He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it, considering. He didn’t know if it was right, ultimately. Everything would be different, he knew, when they were outside, when they were free. Then he would have to question what Steve deserved, and come up with the unavoidable conclusion that it was something, someone, a thousand times above him. Someone intact, someone blameless, someone alive with hope.

But, for now, it was what he wanted desperately. And surely it was better than surrendering him to HYDRA.

When he didn’t answer, Natalia turned to him, giving him a brief smile. There was something behind it – something like encouragement. It might’ve been comforting, if it weren’t also darkened by urgency.

“Good luck,” she said.


	10. Change

“For today’s meditation,” the instructor said, clasping her hands together pointedly, “I’d like us all to focus on the idea of change.”

She made an effort, largely unsuccessful, to make eye contact with every patient in the circle. Bucky looked down, staring at his hand, slack against his gray sweats, at his crossed ankles, his feet, his white socks. It was funny. He couldn’t remember a time, from before, when he wore socks but no shoes.

He couldn’t remember being in a kindergarten class, either, yet inexplicably, he knew they existed. And that was what this felt like, a drugged kindergarten, with drooped heads and silence instead of the mindless enthusiasm.

The instructor didn’t seem phased. She didn’t seem to be expecting a response.

“Soon, you’ll begin a new life outside these –“

He let his mind trail off there. He was used to things, too; used to that particular lie being thrown around, the “one day you’ll leave here” lie, with its endless optimistic variations. But it irritated him, anyway; it seemed especially cruel, to just keep repeating it.

“ – people. They may expect you to be the same person you were, before; to behave in the same way, to make the same decisions. But you’ll need to become comfortable with failing to meet those expectations, because you will be –“

He glanced up, confident that the instructor was too lost in her monologue to notice, and looked across the circle at Natalia. She rarely looked down, as if doing so was its own kind of surrender. Instead, she stared ahead, eyes eerily blank.

Since Clint wasn’t around, she was especially absent. It made him a little jealous – she had somehow mastered the art of appearing mildly insane, but in an innocent, approachable way, one no one was afraid of or intimidated by. Even after all these months, he was still seen as erratic. Potentially unpredictable. Frightening.

“- to be different. To be a new kind of person –“

And that was when the idea hit him, the instructor’s monologue merging with the image of Natalia before him, drowning in her sweatshirt.

“Okay,” the instructor said, finally wrapping up. She clapped her hands once. “Let’s get started!”

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

Clint would keep watch in the hallway, she reassured him. No one would see, but they still had to be quick.

He turned the knob on Natalia’s door, feeling sweat bead at the back of his neck, despite the fact that, as promised, no one was around. He stepped in, slinking through the space between the door and its frame before it fully opened.

She was sitting on the bed, alert, clearly waiting for him. He relaxed, marginally, as the door clicked behind him.

The room was the same as his. He didn’t know why he expected it to be any different, and he didn’t know if it was reassuring or not. That Natalia’s room was as bare as his, as empty, as anonymous. No possessions. No personalization.

“James,” she said, giving him a small smile that, frankly, unnerved him. “I have it right here.”

She reached down, pushing back the sheet and slipping her hand into the seam of her mattress. She’d cut it, somehow, but neatly; it was almost impossible to see the stretch that was no longer sewn together.

She pulled her hand back out, the lithe fingers now wrapped around an object. He could see the blades poking out past her palm.

Safety scissors. Round, blunt, candy-colored scissors meant for children. But still, they could cut.

It was an insult, really – sure, they could cut paper and string, but to take them to your wrists would be messy and pointless. It would be easier to open up your arms with your own teeth – so why not just let them have them?

They kept a sharp eye on the safety scissors. But he’d had faith in Natalia.

“You’re lucky,” he murmured, reaching out to take them. “No one would know you’re so good at stealing.”

“That’s the trick,” she said, maintaining her smile.

He reached into his own pocket, slipping the scissors inside and pulling out the handful of less lucrative items he’d managed to stash himself. Four packets of sugar, and two double packets of saltine crackers.

Pathetic, really. But he hadn’t had much time.

“Is this - ?” he questioned, showing them to her in his open palm. “I could get more, if you give me a few days.”

Her smile faltered, then. She looked strangely surprised.

“That isn’t necessary,” she said, eying them with a slight rise of her chin. “But I’ll take them anyway.”

He nodded, passing them into her hand and watching as they disappeared into the cut seam of her mattress. Then he took in a steadying breath, squaring his shoulders.

“Thank you,” he said, trying as much as he could to imbibe his voice with meaning. It was difficult, sometimes; he was used to keeping it level, monotone. He turned back to the door.

“Wait,” she said suddenly.

He turned back around. He’d been expecting something like this, known that his offering would not be enough. He’d have to be her debt, then – she had favors of her own to ask, and he’d be obligated to fulfill them.

“You’re doing it on your own?” she asked, frowning up at him.

He clutched at the scissors in his pocket. The seconds stretched on – he wasn’t sure what to say.

“You don’t have a mirror,” she said slowly, when he remained silent. “If you try to do it in the bathroom –“

Her voice trailed off, but of course he understood; he’d be caught. He supposed he could ask to use Clint again, to have him guard the door, but that felt over the top. It had already taken too much resolve just to ask Natalia for the scissors.

“I’ll find a way,” he said. He had no faith in his words. Truthfully, he’d been planning to do it in his room, to use his hand to judge the length just by feeling it. It would take time, a lot of time, because he’d have to use care with every cut, but that was all right. He had all night.

“Come here,” Natalia said. She patted her mattress stiffly. “Sit down.”

For a moment, he froze, his muscles stiffening up – but then he was drifting, hesitantly moving toward the bed. He sat, the metal frame groaning beneath their shared weight. Her mattress was just as thin and stiff as his.

He passed her the scissors, steeled his shoulders and turned away as she began tugging at his bun.

“No promises,” she said. He resisted the urge to shudder as he felt her hands run through the tangles, smoothing them out. “I’ve never done this before.”

It surprised him that it hadn’t been done, here, already – forced on him, short hair being a requirement just like the ill-filling clothes and the empty rooms. Maybe they wanted him to remember.

“Not too short,” he found himself saying. He had memories, vague and tattered and worn, of slicking his hair back with something that stuck between his fingers and smelled like rancid Vaseline. It never bothered him much, in the memory; he must have used it many times.

“I’ll try,” Natalia said. He felt a soft tug on the top of his head, heard a thick slice.

‘It’s gettin’ long,’ a voice said behind him. A voice that was achingly familiar, so familiar that he hadn’t needed to turn around and look. He’d stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he hunched over in front of the mirror – he remembered that. Sometimes the memories were pointless, in their absurd level of detail.

‘Yeah,’ he’d sighed, long and low, in front of his reflection. ‘You’re an artist, Stevie, you wanna have a go at it?’

A snort, a rolling of the eyes he hadn’t seen but had heard clearly enough.

‘I ain’t a barber, Buck. If I was, maybe we’d –‘

Another snip. He blinked, jarring himself back to reality. A long piece had fallen onto his thigh, and he glanced down at it, feeling slightly mystified.

“Is this for you,” Natalia asked, her voice soft behind his ear, “Or for Steve?”

He frowned, staring forward since he didn’t want to bow his head and ruin the cut. Another quick click, a few cuts in the same place – the scissors were dull.

“Either way, it’s the same,” he answered. He closed his eyes; it was getting boring, staring out at the back of her door.

Natalia didn’t say anything for a little while. He occupied himself with trying to relax; even though he wanted the hair cut, even though he was, at the heart of it, grateful, he still didn’t like her hands that close to his throat.

“Maybe I should cut my hair,” she said absently. He opened his eyes again, wishing he could look back and see her face. “I like to change it up.”

He wasn’t sure what to say, not wanting to admit that he didn’t care about the length of Natalia’s hair. He thought about commenting on how Clint would probably follow her around with puppy-like obsession even if she shaved her head bald – and then realized how odd that was.

Maybe he just had different taste in women. In his memories, they’d always been thick and full and smiling, warm, smelling like roses. He’d liked them, until they leaned in close and demanded that he tell them what he really wanted, until they touched his hair, until they insisted on being touched themselves.

“Keep the scissors,” he said, when no better answer came to him. “Think about it.”

“No,” she said, after a long moment. Such a slow conversation. He almost wished she wouldn’t talk at all, even though he was, still, buried deep within, thankful for this. He hadn’t liked that much, either. Girls who couldn’t stop talking. “You take them. They might come in handy for you again.”

Bucky doubted that, although it was an amusing thought. Cornering someone, only to produce those stubby little scissors as a threat.

When he didn’t answer, another silence fell – until Natalia spoke again, sighing after a particularly deft cut.

“I miss curling irons,” she said, her words warm on the back of his neck.

Now that would be a potentially useful weapon. Especially if you could keep it plugged into the wall.

“I miss,” he said, and stopped, wondering what he missed. He didn’t seem to have ever had much. “Belts.”

“Belts?” she repeated, a hint of amusement in her voice.

He paused, because he wasn’t really sure what it was, about belts. Part of his mind continued the theme started by the scissors and the curling iron – a belt would make for a decent weapon, too. Damaging, lightweight. And then there was the potential of using it for restraint.

But it was more than that – something about the satisfaction of tightening it, of dressing at all, finishing the outfit. He’d liked that. Clothes. Looking put together, hair slicked back, tie snug around his throat. It felt as almost as good as loosening it, the moment he stepped back into their apartment.

Something, too, about fumbling with the buckle when he was a little drunk. Hesitating, making a show of it, so he could glance over and watch as Steve undid his own with those long, delicate, careful fingers –

“I think we’re almost there,” Natalia said, finally. He waited, bearing a few more snips until she shifted, moving around to face him.

She looked him over, frowning, considering, before she grinned.

“You look like James Dean,” she said, her voice satisfied.

He frowned; he wasn’t sure who that was. 

He could only hope that he did look like James – the old one – whoever that had been. Maybe he could even find something to slick his hair back.

He lifted his hand, ran it back through the short strands. He tensed as memory ran through him, a shiver in his veins. He’d done that before; he’d done it often.

“Thank you,” he said again. 

 

\--- --- --- --- --- ---

 

He ran his fingertips over the paper. It was flimsy, and too white, almost blue. Not the kind of paper that artists used. 

There was none of that here – no real tools, because there were no real artists. The paintings they made weren’t for others, or even for themselves; they were disposable. A distraction, as you moved on toward becoming a real person, a full person. A person who deserved a real canvas, paint that wasn’t primary colored and washable.

He sighed to himself, setting it aside. It wasn’t much – just what he’d managed to filch from the recycling bin, one of few pieces he’d found that weren’t partially cut apart, with one whole blank side. The other side was married with song lyrics written out in blocky black letters that showed through in bright light, but – it was the best he could do.

It was a familiar feeling. Holding in his hands something meant for Steve, and aching with the knowledge that it ought to be better. That it should be the best, the finest money could buy, and it wasn’t.

But Steve had never complained. He’d always been easily pleased, unaccustomed to gifts or, really, niceties of any kind.

It was selfish, but he hoped that hadn’t changed.

He had a pencil, too. A half pencil, with a dull tip and no eraser, but he couldn’t help that. A full pencil, or a pen, or a marker (all options he had carefully considered) would’ve been too big to palm into his hand.

He wondered, as he paced his room, waiting – why outlaw pencils? You could jab them into someone’s throat, sure. But maybe they had other reasons. Maybe they didn’t want them writing, slipping notes. Making their secrets more real, more dangerous in the telling.

There was a quiet knock at his door. Not even a knock, really; a rasp, like someone dragging their knuckles down the wood.

He opened the door, his breath catching briefly in his throat, as always, at the sight of Steve. He stepped back, letting him pass quickly over the threshold.

He looked nervous, Bucky mused, as he looked over him; hesitant, as if he knew he shouldn’t be here. And that had always been the case – he was never supposed to be here, stealing minutes alone with him – but now there was an added layer of guilt.

He drifted back to the bed, careful not to crowd him. Steve didn’t quite meet his eye.

“Are we - ?” Steve asked, his tentative voice drifting off. He wrung his hands together, giving himself something to look down at while he spoke. “After last time – I mean –“

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Bucky said. He picked up the paper and the little pencil, pausing for a moment before he spoke – he didn’t want his voice to sound too meek, too – desperate. “Will you draw me?”

He held out the paper stiffly, waiting as Steve finally forced himself to look up. His mouth fell open.

“Your hair,” he said, lifting a hand to the back of his own head, as if someone had cut off his instead.

Bucky licked his lips, squaring his shoulders as he allowed himself to be looked over. That was what it was all about, after all, this plan of his – being seen.

“I was ready for a change,” he said, fighting, every second, the urge to bow his head and look away.

“It’s –“ Steve said, cutting himself off to stare a few moments longer. “It’s so – different. But how did you - ?”

“A friend helped me with it,” Bucky said. He didn’t know why he didn’t want to say Natalia’s name – to protect her, maybe. Or maybe just to be sure Steve didn’t interfere with her, and her convenient ability to steal things for him.

Steve fell silent. He knew, of course, that neither Bucky nor any of the other patients were allowed tools for cutting – that the self-expression touted in their classes was not meant to extend to their own bodies. But he didn’t ask the question.

“It’s really,” he said instead, swallowing. “It looks good. Really good.”

Bucky took in a little breath at that, finally caving and glancing at the floor as he ran his hand back through the short strands, curling loosely at the ends.

“My friend, she said,” he offered, looking back up. “That I looked like – James Dean?”

“James Dean?” Steve repeated. His face fell blank with confusion, and Bucky offered him a shrug.

“I don’t know who that is, either,” he said. He was still holding the paper, and Steve finally let his eyes drift down from Bucky’s face and onto it.

“Oh,” he said, as if just remembering Bucky’s request. His cheeks flushed – that was normal, Bucky remembered. It had always been easy to spot a blush on that pale, Irish skin. “Well – listen, Bucky, it’s been a real long time since I’ve –“

“It’s gotta be like riding a bike, right?” he said, but he didn’t know. He’d never had a bike growing up, and he’d never been good at drawing, either – even Steve had given up on teaching him early on, and Steve never gave up at anything he believed in. 

“I don’t know,” Steve replied sheepishly. But he took the paper, Bucky releasing it with a burst of relief seizing his chest – and he took the pencil, too. “I won’t do you justice.”

Bucky couldn’t remember him saying that; couldn’t remember this much resistance. But then, it wasn’t quite the same – he never asked Steve to draw him, before. He just did, sketchbook tucked beneath his knees, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, like it was a secret. Like watching a girl undress.

“Sure you will,” Bucky assured him. And he believed that, he really did; Steve always saw the best in him, what little of it there was, always caught it in his smile and made it seem ten times better than it really was.

He sat on his bed – the bed he slept in, anyway – and Steve moved hesitantly to the unused twin across from it. Bucky passed his copy of Hamlet across the space between them – something solid for Steve to draw on.

And then Bucky posed, the way he’d planned to. He spread his legs apart, resting his elbow on his thigh and leaning forward. He let his wrist go slack between his bent knees – and he smiled. A bright, full, false smile that tugged uncomfortably at the muscles in his face.

That was what he remembered, about James. That he smiled, and that he posed. He was always on display, casual until it hurt, until he was curled up in bed next to Steve and they’d talked and talked until Steve finally didn’t respond, and then he’d lean in, let his mouth get just close enough to –

“How’s this?” Bucky asked.

Steve had gone white across from him. He blinked, suddenly picking up his pencil.

And then he was drawing him, the way he used to. Or close enough, by Bucky’s estimation – the old Steve had never seemed quite that careful, that tentative, with the strokes of his charcoal, instead moving his stained fingers with the grace of a dancer. But it was the same in the way that Steve would glance up from time to time, and Bucky’s heart would seize in his chest until he looked down again.

He found himself relaxing into the pose, into the familiarity of it. James had liked walls, too, leaning against walls – so many memories of leaning against a brick wall in the crisp night air, passing a cigarette from his lips to his fingers, letting the movement numb him, because he didn’t want to think about –

Steve was frowning, the pencil slowing until it finally stopped.

“This is strange, but,” he said, shaking his head a little as if to dislodge the idea, even as he voiced it, “Were you ever in the military?”

Bucky frowned back at that, before his lips curled, almost of their own accord, into a tight smirk.

“Briefly,” he said, leaning forward a little more.

“It’s just that I,” Steve said, and he raised his pencil again, but didn’t let it touch the paper. “I don’t want to draw you in – in that.”

Bucky spared a glance down at himself, at the too-big clothes that hung bulkily from his frame, making him seem bigger than he really was.

“Who would?” he said in distaste. “I could –“

He made a motion toward the bottom of his sweatshirt, and Steve started shaking his head emphatically.

“No, no, that’s not,” Steve said, swallowing hard again. “That’s really not necessary.”

“Draw me in whatever you want, then,” Bucky said.

He tried not to make his voice snappish. He tried not to be annoyed, disappointed, at that reaction.

Steve nodded, pursing his full lips as he considered, eyes firm on the paper. Finally, with slow, careful strokes, he began drawing again.

Bucky occupied himself with keeping still, until the stiffness in his shoulders nagged at him – he wanted to roll them back, bow his neck, stretch – but more than that he wanted Steve to finish because, as the seconds ticked away, he became increasingly aware of the time. 

They didn’t have much left. Steve couldn’t stay all night.

Finally – finally! – with a final lick of his lips, he set the pencil down on the bed.

Bucky stood immediately, closing the distance between them and leaning down to look. When he saw it –

He reached out, taking the edge of the paper in his hand. Steve let it go easily, looking behind his shoulder, trying to catch Bucky’s reaction – but he was already walking away, drawing in hand, spinning back because there was no room to pace, wanting to run his hand back through his hair even though he couldn’t, that other hand was gone.

It was more then he expected. He’d hoped for something like this, yes, but Steve’s drawing was so deliberate, with so much detail –

He realized Steve was watching him with growing concern, so he finally went still, stopping in front of the other man, but unable to tear his eyes away from the paper in front of him.

“What is it?” Steve asked, his frown deepening by the second. “Does it remind you of something? Something that – because – I didn’t mean –“

Bucky tilted his head back, laughing. It was too loud of a laugh, too abrupt – god, would he ever learn how much laughing tended to unsettle people? – but he couldn’t help it. 

Remind him of something? It was like a goddamn photograph.

“Bucky,” Steve said, his voice darkened by concern.

“I wore this suit to your mother’s funeral,” he said, wanting to stab at the page – it was so frustrating, sometimes, having no free hand when the other was occupied. He tightened his grip, instead; the paper creased, threatening to crumple.

Steve froze in front of him. He had been inching forward – to comfort him, maybe, to corral him, Bucky wasn’t sure – but now he stopped, his face growing pale again.

“Excuse me?” he asked. Bucky could hear the tightness in his throat.

And there it was – his opportunity to lie, to come up with anything, anything, to retract that statement. And there was no excuse – Bucky was an excellent liar, after all – as to why he didn’t take it.

It was euphoria, he would decide later, a word he’d picked up at some point during his stay. He was high, on that little snippet of truth.

“I wore this suit,” he repeated, eyes scanning the details again for confirmation, although he didn’t need to – the dark jacket, the wide lapels, the striped white shirt beneath it – “To your Ma’s funeral.”

It took a moment for Steve to respond. When he did, his voice was stiff, grinding out the words slowly. Bucky couldn’t tell if he was terrified or angry.

“How do you know,” Steve asked, slowly, very slowly – “That my mother is dead?”

Bucky laughed again – he shouldn’t have, but he did – not with euphoria but with irony, because once he had known everything, everything, about Steve Rogers. What he ate, what he wore, the sounds he made when he slept. What kind of girls he liked – brunettes – and he’d paid careful attention to that, sure to bring around blonds and redheads on their double dates.

And his mother? He’d loved her. He really had, strange as it was to remember the capacity to love beyond Steve.

Who was waiting, now, in front of him. Waiting for an answer he didn’t have.

Why not dive in, then? Seal the deal?

“The tie,” he said, thrusting the paper back at Steve. He didn’t take it. “The tie you drew - it reminded me of her. That’s why I wore it. It had blood on it, your blood, from this one time you got into a fight, and we were stupid, y’know, we tried to get it out ourselves. We used real hot water, but you ain’t supposed to do that –“

His Brooklyn accent was coming back, Bucky could hear it. And with every loose syllable, Steve was stepping away, closer to the door, blue eyes widening and unreadable.

“And y’know, it set the stain,” he continued. “Your Ma tried and tried to get it out – she really scrubbed hard – and when she couldn’t she taught us how’ta get blood outta clothes the right away, lecturing us the whole time ‘bout how we shouldn’t be getting’ inta fights in the first place –“

“Stop,” Steve said softly. He wasn’t angry, Bucky realized – he was scared, after all, clutching at his hair. “Please –“

But he couldn’t.

“I had to keep it tucked in,” he finished, trying to make his voice more gentle, soothing. As if that could make a difference. “Because of the stain.”

“You’re –“ Steve began, swallowing the word. “That’s – you were never at my mother’s funeral.”

Bucky smiled. He’d had a long time to remember.

“You picked lilacs for her,” he said, and even though the words felt twisted, and cruel, they also felt liberating, because they were true. “You threw them in the ground. In her grave.”

Steve was bowing his head now, clutching both sides of his face. But Bucky was merciless.

“She loved the color,” he continued quickly, “And the way they smelled, and we used to steal them from this rich broad’s yard, and we told your Ma they were from a park and they were wild but they weren’t –“

“Stop!” Steve shouted, looking up at again. His eyes were wide, red-rimmed and wet – and that was what stopped him. The tears. “Just, please, just …”

Steve was stumbling toward the door, now, reaching for the handle. As soon as he saw that, Bucky rushed for the doorframe, blocking his way.

“Wait,” he said, taking in a dizzying breath. “You remember, don’t you? What I said. You know it’s true.”

Steve shook his head, hard – he reached out blindly for the door, and Bucky pushed his hand away.

“Say it,” he demanded, even though tears were filling his eyes, too. “Just say it. Say you remember.”

“Let me go,” Steve said. He made another move for the handle, and when Bucky stopped him again, his shattered face twisted in a scowl. “Goddamn it, Buck, just let me –“

Bucky grabbed his wrist, barely registering what happened next – Steve twisting free of his grip, advancing on him, pinning him against the door. In an instant, they were nose to nose, blue eyes searing into him.

He didn’t look away. Instead, he stared back, daring him to deny it, because he knew – he knew – that what he remembered was real. 

It had to be.

Steve took in a few deep, shuddering breaths, staring back. He leaned forward imperceptibly, until Bucky could practically taste his breath, and he thought –

But then Steve’s hand was turning the handle, and Bucky was stumbling back into emptiness, startled, as the other man slipped passed him into the silent hallway.


End file.
